Seeing the Past in the Future (Hello Kitty vs. Bigfoot)

This morning The Little Monster did something that reminded me a LOT of myself as a kid. While she has watched a fair amount of scary and semi-scary stuff over the past few years, it's always amazing just what the imagination of a young child will decide is scary.

The Monster was in the living room watching her "Hello Kitty Becomes a Princess" DVD. Yes, I do allow her to watch non-monster based programming. To say that this particular DVD is not scary would be an understatement. Nonetheless, she came out to the kitchen to bother her little sister--who was trying to eat breakfast. When I asked her why she wasn't watching her show she said that it was a scary part that she didn't want to see. Not only did this thought seem hilarious--that something in the Hello Kitty DVD (which she's watched dozens of times) would scare her enough to walk out of the room--it also reminded me of something from my Monster Kid past.

As a kid I loved (and frequently feared) the show "In Search of...". This was the syndicated half-hour show hosted by Leonard Nimoy which explored many mysterious and supernatural phenomena around the world. Some of the topics that I best remember include the episodes that covered stuff like Bigfoot, The Loch Ness Monster, ghosts, UFOs, and the like. As a kid these shows could be VERY scary. The fact that they were seriously investigating such strange occurrences and treated the subjects as real made them seem all the more "real"--and subsequently, scary. The re-enactments were probably the scariest parts of all.

As a kid, I was very interested in Bigfoot, The Abominable Snowman, Sasquatch, Yeti, and all the other names for the big, hairy monsters that might have lurked in the forests and mountains of the world. The fact that there might be real monsters out there similar to the stuff I'd see in monster movies on TV was just too interesting to ignore. It was always a special treat when "In Search of..." would focus on one of these legendary beasts. I remember one night when a Bigfoot-related episode was on. I wanted to watch it, but at one point they had one of those monster-point-of-view recreations of a Bigfoot incident that seemed way to real to me. Much as The Little Monster's imagination made something scary out of something as innocent and kid-friendly as Hello Kitty, my imagination made this Bigfoot encounter much more than a simple re-enactment. I left the living room and went downstairs to my sister's room. Ostensibly I was going down to tell her that there was something really cool on TV that she should see. In reality, I was escaping from the certain-to-induce-intense-nightmares scene that was unfolding on the screen.

It was a very similar event to what would happen to my Little Monster this morning, except that she was big enough to admit that she didn't want to watch her scary scene because it was scary. I had to try to disguise my fear behind a mask of false concern that my sister (who wouldn't have been interested anyway) would miss something cool--while I was purposely missing it in order to inform her about it. Aah, the inner workings of the mind of a child...

Here's one of the "In Search of..." episodes that featured Bigfoot

I'm not sure if this is the exact one that I referred to above, but it's a good example.

Sleep Tight!