hwango

In just a few more months, we would have a child. We were excited and, if we were honest, a little terrified. Taking care of a baby a big responsibility, after all, and neither of us had any close family or friends with kids, so it's not like we could practice with someone else's child first. We signed up for every class we could find for expecting parents, so we would be prepared for everything. After a while, they started to blur together, and we started showing up to them with no idea what aspect of child-rearing we were going to be taught about that day. When to start on which kinds of food, which sorts of toys promoted cognitive growth, what color we should paint the walls in the nursery - it could be anything. We'd signed up for everything.

But we hadn't realized quite how all-encompassing "everything" actually was until the guy at the front of the room popped the cap off a marker and scrawled on the whiteboard in gigantic capital letters "THE BOOGEYMAN." He then underlined it several times.

"That's right," he said. "The Boogeyman. He's the single greatest danger your child will face in the first decade of his or her life, plus or minus a few years. If he can, he will steal and eat your children because, let's face it, they're delicious." He then spoke at great length about various measures we could take to keep the Boogeyman out of our house, but that none of them were one hundred percent reliable. That's why it was so important that we teach our child to be polite, obedient, and well-behaved , because the Boogeyman could smell misbehavior from many miles away, and it would draw him a like a shark to blood.

He then went on to caution us about the various other kinds of monsters that lurk under beds, in closets, in drains, and the unthinkable number of things that inhabited darkness.

"The world is a terrifying place full of things that want to eat your delicious, delicious children. But with careful planning, constant vigilance, and a little luck, you will prevail, and your child will reach adolescence uneaten."

In the end, we decided to paint the nursery green. It would supposedly promote learning, concentration, and calmness.

We decided we'd need all the calm we could get.