As the blog is primarily about William I'll switch the focus to him now. He is now much better at holding hands, and when he doesn't we hook him up to his Elmo leash and let him enjoy the freedom a 4 foot radius circle allows. We walked into the store and the first thing that caught our eyes was the display of 6 or 7 moving Halloween decorations. As we approached the first one began to move, a monster in a cloak that made William jump. He pressed up against my legs, turned around and reached upwards, needing a safe embrace from the monster. This is when I started to question fear, a topic I will continue later in the blog.
As we went around William pressed closer and closer into my chest. His head turned from the rising vampires, the moving scarecrows, the haunted guides, the knife killer. His fear did not diminish until we reached the children's costume section, his need for independence returning now that the only objects staring at him were cardboard replicas of Lightning McQueen instead of psycho killers. Beckoning I place him down he ran for the replica, only to find it had no seats or steering wheels. Dismayed he made his way to his mom and asked up, then proceeded to ask to be let down as he saw the children's costume isles. Running through them he saw nothing that caught his eye, except for the empty shelf space. Colorful costumes array around him and he stops for the black, cold metal of the shelf they are on. I have since concluded he wants to be a shelf for Halloween, but his mom probably won't let me do that.
On the way back through the store we found an animatronic Frankenstein (Yes I know Frankenstein's Monster) and he groaned and moved his arms and shook his head. William didn't seem phased. It may have been that we had shown him how they work by pressing the buttons, but he was not phased. He touched Frankenstein and then went to touch the button to make him move again. I won't get into my thesis on fear yet, but this is where I begin to see where childhood fear ends and adult fear begins.
We made our way to the back of the store, where a sewer system had been set up. Inside this sewer system of misting pipes and oozing water were more decorations, all of these with a zombie theme. William was slightly scared at first of the groaning, munching, screaming, writhing decorations, and I had to hold him until we left. It was not until we went to the hat section, where William found a fireman's hat, that he would overcome his fear of the zombies. Donning the red helmet he raced to the back of the store, as if knowing that the fireman could save the people from the horrible zombies. I was so proud of him, rushing in to help people. I like to think this is the case, either that or he was going to show off his new hat to his Zombie friends.
The last thing we saw as we left the store was a fog bubble machine. It would blow a bubble full of fog about 10 feet up and then it would fall to the ground and burst into little smoke bubbles. William was fascinated by these, for about 10 minutes he stood there trying to catch them as they exploded on his hands and head.
And now to my theory of fear. At first I could not figure out why William was afraid. He could not be afraid for the reason you or I would be afraid. You or I, thinking that the beings were real, would sense fear because of what we know they are. The undead, things that shouldn't exist, that they were creatures intent on our demise. But this cannot be what William is afraid of. He does not have the knowledge that these creatures are dead. He does not know they are out to get him. He is just afraid, a primal urge that things that look that way and sound that way should be feared. It is not startled, as I have seen him startled, he was afraid of these things. They were different. My theory is that there are two types of fear involved with Halloween and the undead. One is primal fear, the fear of the unknown, of things that are not like we are. Primal fear is the most base fight or flight response to something we do not understand but see it as out to hurt us. Knowledgable fear is the other kind. I am not afraid of a zombie because I do not know what it is. I fear the zombie because I know what it signifies. It signifies the end, of change, of something inherently wrong. And yet so very awesome. <3 Zombies.
No comments:
Post a Comment