A Moment with Sam

While we were camping I made an offhanded comment to Dave about peeing in the woods at night. I said, “I should look first before I drop my pants, a raccoon might have bitten my butt.”

Generally, Sam doesn’t often pay attention to what I have to say because a) if it’s about him, I’m usually telling him what to do or b) it isn’t about him, it’s about something he could care less about—facebook, family politics, gossip, black and white movies. I consider myself fortunate that I have yet to hear my conversation verbatim coming from his mouth. And Sam isn’t easily scared, not by movies or vampires or Frankenstein (we call things like that toys for your imagination. Toys aren’t scary). But my comment about raccoons biting butts was very scary to him.

At the campground, there was a tree lined trail called Raccoon Run. As we started down it, he jumped in my arms, telling me the Raccoons would bite HIS butt.

When it was time for bed, he told me he was too scared to sleep. I crawled into bed with him. Now I was a scaredy-cat kid. I was afraid of ghost, astro space travel (which is when your soul flies around while you sleep—it was tough being a kid in the 70s), home invasion, fires, etc. I told myself that I would never try to rationalize away my child’s fear, because the more any adult talked about the unlikelihood of home invasion and astro space travel, the more I thought it about it, the more scared I became. With Sam, I tried to think of the least scary thing in the world. And what came to my mind was Lawrence Welk.

I told him about my Granny and how she watched the show on a small color TV that was on Grandma Betty’s kitchen table, how on the show all the women wore chiffon skirts, how each were a different pastel color—sky blue, cotton candy pink, sunshine yellow, how their hair was high, and how frosty their eye-shadow was, how the men’s hair never moved and was always shiny, how Lawrence’s hair was wavy and when he spoke to the camera, he turned to side to show off his accordion. And after everyone danced, sang and drank champagne, they would end each show with the song, “Goodnight, sleep tight and pleasant dreams to you. Here’s a wish and a prayer that all your dreams come true.”

After I thought Sam was fast asleep because Lawrence Welk always had the effect on me, I tried to quietly slip out of the room but before I could leave, he asked, “What other show did you watch?” So I told him about the Waltons.