And one more for good measure--this is under a picture of L. looking extremely happy as he sits next to a skeleton, and I know the caption will make Jilli a happy Fairy Gothmother:
When L. was an infant, I read Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation and fell in love with her three-year old nephew Owen, whom she describes as “the most Hitchcockian preschooler I ever met.” (“He’s three,” she writes. “He knows maybe ninety words and one of them is ‘crypt.’) It’s a few years later, and L. has wound up with a morbid streak of his own that I find just as charming as I’d earlier found Owen’s. He’s a budding Burton/Elfman fan who sings “This Is Halloween” at top volume on the playground. He delights in creepy stories, in monsters and ghosts and all things spooky. He does a very credible Draculian “I vant to suck your blood!”
Many years ago, my mother gave me a tabletop-sized anatomical skeleton model. I had it in the storage area off of the walk-in closet in our bedroom, which you get to through this half-sized door with a hinky latch that never closes firmly. L. followed me into the closet earlier this summer. The storage area door had come unlatched and was hanging open. He saw the little skeleton guy standing in there and, as you might well imagine, was curious about it. I brought it out, showed him how the skeleton guy worked, and satisfied his curiosity.
…For a little while, at least. Before much time had passed, he was asking about it again. I brought it down to the living room so he could play with it to his heart’s content. …And did he! He immediately dubbed his new friend “Mister Skeleton” and for about a week, he insisted that Mister Skeleton accompany him everywhere. He carried on whispered conversations with Mister Skeleton. He dragged Mister Skeleton around the house by one arm, like a twisted Halloween version of Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh.
Mister Skeleton had to sit at the table with us to eat lunch. Mister Skeleton had to sit on the loveseat next to us and read stories. Mister Skeleton had to go play outside with us in the sandbox. We forgot about Mister Skeleton one day, and I noticed several hours later that Mister Skeleton was still sitting out in the sandbox by his lonesome, surrounded by empty pails and buckets. I wonder what the neighbors must think of us.