How Not to Calm a Child on a Plane by Johanna Stein Page B

throes of boogeyman terror, I began to see that perhaps she is a bit more like me than I thought.

    My first boogeyman’s name was Norman, and he hid under my bed. I can’t take credit for inventing him—he was not so loosely based on a friend of the family, a mild-mannered tax attorney with long, slender hands. It may sound silly, but trust me: when you’re four years old, the specter of a grown man preparing tax returns under your bed while you sleep is terrifying.
    After my parents took me to see Night of the Living Dead —when I was seven (note to self: check statute of limitations with Child Protective Services)—Norman the Boogeyman evolved into a never-ending slew of random dead guys. And the under-my-bed part was replaced by the whole world . That pile of leaves? A cover for a rotting cadaver. That upright freezer by the side of the road? Filled with bodies chopped up and stacked like logs. Attics, closets, crawl spaces, porta-potties—all were fair game for my corpse-based fears.
    Perhaps this is where my daughter and I diverge?
    Perhaps not.

    The kid is in her little girly room, diligently focused on drawing a picture. “What’s that?” I ask. “Is that a kitty and a doggy hugging?”
    â€œNO,” she says. “IT’S TWO VAMPIRES. THEY’RE EATING EACH OTHER. SEE? THAT’S THE BLOOD!”
    My immediate instinct is to correct her and point out that she’s way off base with this one: vampires are not the same as zombies—they don’t eat flesh; they suck blood. Everybody knows that—it’s a pretty basic distinction. And even if they did eat flesh, how could they eat each other simultaneously? It doesn’t even make sense. Then I remember—she’s only three. Such subtleties would only be lost on her. Instead, I praise her for how well she’s coloring inside the lines.

    I grew up in Winnipeg, which is a Cree word meaning “Mucky Waters,” in a house on the banks of the Red River, the very mucky waters for which the city was named.
    Friends were in short supply the summer after seventh grade. I was no longer speaking with Theresa Spak, not since she’d disputed my claim that I’d invented the euphemisms “Number One” and “Number Two” for discussing bodily functions. “ Somebody invented it. Why is it so hard to believe it was me?” I’d screamed over mayonnaise sandwiches. (Years later I would come to realize that I was wrong, but by then there was too much Number One under the bridge to do anything about it.)
    Then there was Elena Hrabiuk, a girl I’d met at orchestra camp. Elena had wide-set eyes and usually smelled of fried pierogi. Seeing that my only alternative was to spend the afternoon with my brother Aaron while he belched “This Land Is Your Land” at my face, I called Elena and invited her over.
    We hung out in my room for forty-five minutes or so, crying to the greatest hits of Air Supply. After the batteries in my boom box died, we went out to the backyard, where my dad was standing over the barbecue, swearing at a plate of raw hamburger. My dad was once a radical hippie, and back in the day he had marched at Berkeley, but now he was living on the Canadian prairies and the only remnants of his hippie past were the three hits of acid chilling in the refrigerator crisper. He suggested we “go play down by the river.” Since Elena was raised in eastern Europe and unfamiliar with the concept of sarcasm, she led the way.
    We climbed down the bank through the slimy grass and muck and jumped onto our neighbor’s dock.
    The Paddlewheel Queen chugged past for its daily afternoon cruise. We jumped up and down, waving and yelling obscenities at the boat whose passengers consisted of a few drunken old ladies and some handicapped kids from a nearby group home. The boat sent a ripple of waves toward the dock, disturbing the dark water. My eye caught