nemesis

I was making chocolate chip cookies yesterday afternoon when I heard a distant BOINNNNNNG from somewhere over my head. About 2 seconds later, I could hear Alice's telltale FEAR cry - the one she reserves for Very Loud Noises and more specifically, the one she reserves for the BOING-making implement:


Do you have these in your house? The little brass spring thing that's supposed to stop the door from running into the wall? Fergus likes to find these things and attempt to tear off the white rubber cap with his teeth. But Alice... oh, Alice, she is TERRIFIED of them.

Of course, as is the case with anything that scares the ever-living PANTS off you, Alice is inexplicably DRAWN to these boingy doorstop things. Heaven forbid she's crawling in the bathroom (we don't need to discuss WHY), and I'm not able to stop her hand from reaching for the Object of Horror (again - we don't need to discuss WHY I'm unavailable to stop her)--- it's happened many times: I watch in horrified slow motion as Alice reaches for the Fancy! Shiny! Boingy! Thing!, all the while I'm clapping my hands, shouting, singing, doing whatever I can to get her to STOP. But it never works and her little hand touches the boingy and then we get the BOINNNNNNNNNNNNG and Alice is crying her eyes out.

So back to yesterday. It's not like I found a REASON to ever tell Chip about this particular Alice Quirk. These things just don't pop up in conversation, you know?

Transcript of yesterday's doings:
BOINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG!
Alice: SCREAM! CRY! CRY! CRY! CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY! (this continues for a minute or two then there is this in quick succession:)
BOINNNNNNG!
BOINNNNNNG!
BOINNNNNNG!
BOINNNNNNG!
-Beat of silence-
Alice: SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAM! CRY! CRY! CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY!
Chip: I'm so sorry, baby girl! I'm so sorry!

It's at this point that I got involved and called upstairs to see what was going on.
Whimsy: Is everyone okay up there? Did Alice get scared of the door stop boingy thing?
Chip: HOW DID YOU KNOW?
Whimsy: Um, it's like, her NEMESIS. She can't NOT touch the brass door stop thing, and yet it scares her to pieces.
Chip: That's EXACTLY it! We're hanging out in her room, and she boinged the thing, started to cry, and so I thought I'd show her it's nothing to be afraid of, so I pulled it a few times and scared the CRAP out of her.


About an hour later, after I'd put her down for her afternoon nap, she totally woke up in a TEARFUL FIT, not once - but TWICE. Nightmares. And you know what I think? I think she had nightmares about giant brass door stoppers coming to make terrifying noises at her. I think she didn't know she had one of those contraptions of death actually IN HER ROOM and now she's afraid it's going to attack her IN HER SLEEP.

Chip and Whimsy: doing their best to instill Rational Fears in their child.

Now tell me: do you have any irrational fears? Or rational ones? What about the kids in your life? I want to know!