Baby monsters

This story originally appeared in the October 21, 2010, issue of The Trussville Tribune.

With the spring arrival of a cutie named Sam, my friend, Shirley, became a grandmother for the first time. As with most first children/grandchildren, preparations for Sam’s arrival began as soon as his due date was announced, and finding the perfect nursery theme soon became a top priority for his mom and grandmother.

A creative pair, Shirley and expectant daughter Melanie headed to a baby specialty store, hoping a stroll up and down the aisles would generate some ideas.

“Melanie wanted something fresh and different, as all her friends seemed to be decorating with the same woodland creatures or monkeys or tried-and-true bunnies and ducks,” Shirley later told me. “We didn’t see anything that ‘spoke’ to us until we were leaving the store, and she saw two plush monsters – a male and a female version – in the clearance bin.”

And the idea for Sam’s monster nursery was born.

The plush pair rode home on the dashboard of the car while the mommy and nana-to-be began plotting their decorating strategy. Before long, they’d purchased monster fabric, ordered monster-embroidered quilt blocks and commissioned original monster paintings. As friends and family members learned of the plan, they made their own contributions, including monster piggy banks, a monster beanbag chair and monster ugly dolls. Nana Shirley even made a 17-foot monster snake for Sam.

Cute, huh? Especially for a little boy.

But I have to admit when I first heard that Sam would be compelled to spend his first night at home – and many nights thereafter – amidst a collection of monsters, I was doubtful. I mean, isn’t every kid’s nightmare being eaten alive by a big hairy beast that comes alive only after bedtime? And Sam would not only have to worry about one monster; he’d be surrounded.

On the other hand, I figured, Sam’s immediate exposure to monsters might grant him a measure of immunity to monster-fright, a condition that has afflicted countless over-imaginative children since time began, including me. My monsters, like many monsters of childhood, lived under the bed.

When I was a kid, I slept in a mahogany four-poster bed that sat high enough to allow a foot or so of space between the box springs and the floor. In other words, there was plenty of room for a monster or two down there.

Until I was five or six years old, the only monster residing under my bed was the generic green kind with fangs, horns and one Cyclopean eye in the middle of his forehead. Then my parents took my brothers and me to the drive-in theater to see To Kill a Mockingbird, and a second monster that looked an awful lot like Boo Radley came along.

I imagined the two scary creatures huddled under the bed, plotting to jump out the minute I dozed off and scare the living daylights out of me. Fortunately, they never pulled any of their monster stunts – at least not any that I know of. It’s quite possible they simply never managed to wake me up, since that was back when I could sleep like a rock for eight hours at a stretch.

As you can probably guess, under-the-bed monsters aren’t a problem for me anymore. For one thing, I grew up. And for another, there are too many gigantic Tupperware-like storage boxes wedged under the beds at our house to allow much room for monsters. To fit into any leftover space, the poor creatures would have to be too small to be scary.

And as for Sam? He’s reportedly thriving among the monsters, happily unaware that his colorful nursery décor is the stuff of nightmares for other kids. Kind of makes me wish my parents had thought to decorate my nursery with monsters. It might have saved me a lot of needless anxiety.