Chip Off the Old Block

I've often remarked that The Boy received exactly NO physical characteristics from me--he is a teeny carbon copy of Hublet, which does afford me much amusement when I observe them standing side-by-side--but I take solace in the fact that his personality is much closer to mine than to Hublet's.

Well, I'll take solace in it until he hits adolescence, at which point I will deny that he has any personality traits even remotely resembling my own. 

So, as I've enjoyed The Boy's evolution into Boyhood, I've been waiting to see if he would ever share one trait that I hold dear to my heart (well, behind a love of roller coasters, which - CHECK!  Woo-hoo! Can't wait until the State Fair!):  a love of horror.

Hublet does not share this trait, and my annual Halloween Evil Dead Trilogy movie fests just aren't as much fun solo.

This past weekend, we were perusing the Cartoon Network and happened upon an ad for their Goosebumps Halloween Movie, weirdly titled, "The Witching Hour: Don't Think About it."  The Boy stared at the ad in fascination and then turned to me and said, "Oooh!  That's a SCARY Movie!"

My heart sank.  Until later that day, when The Boy asked, "Mommy, can we see that scary movie?"

I told him we'd TiVo it on Sunday, since it was 2 hours, and he could watch one hour Sunday, and one Monday.

And thus began The Great Scary Movie Experiment, wherein we would determine whether or not The Boy was indeed capable of handling a Goosebumps made-for-tv flick starring one of the Osment spawn as a disaffected goth chick.

Since the only nightmares The Boy's ever had have consisted of being attacked by giant blue bumblebees, I decided to remain hopeful.

We did have to snuggle with him during the scary parts, but he has now seen the whole thing, and it made him more excited than scared.  We did a total recap during bedtime last night, with The Boy acting out all the scary parts.  And as a bonus for me, it was fun to see a non-jaded horror movie viewer actually be SURPRISED at the "surprise twist" ending of a movie.

So, no nightmares.  No requests for additional lighting, checks under the bed or in the closet, or any of that stuff. And this morning, The Boy inquired about when the next scary movie was coming on.

Cartoon Network has scheduled the old Goosebumps series to run during October, so it looks like we'll be TiVo-ing those as well.

I've created a monster.

Yay!