Henry is scared to be alone anywhere in our house no matter what time of day it and no matter who is in the house with him. And like most things I write about, it’s all Stephen’s fault. But because I am honest, I will take credit for starting the whole thing.

Henry banged up his knee real bad. There was a big, hard looking ball stuck underneath the skin on the scrapped up knee. Over the summer Henry had an ouchy on his heal that looked similar in shape and appearance. It turned out that there was a big thorn festering away as his skin tried to grow over it. So when I saw something big and hard underneath this knee ouchy, I wanted to take a look.



However, Henry was not about to let me look at his knee. So I tried to turn it into a game and started tickling him. When he still wouldn’t let me look, I told him I needed to check his knee to make sure a baby alien was going to pop out of it. Henry thought this was hilarious and was laughing and telling Stephen that I thought there was an alien in his knee.

And this would be the part where Stephen takes it too far. A few days later, he loaded up YouTube and found a clip from that scene in Alien where the creature bursts out of that guy’s chest while the rest of the crew holds him down and shoves a spoon in his mouth. Wyatt was unfazed but Henry, of course, was done for.

Immediately regretting this fine parenting move, Stephen showed the boys a clip from Space Balls spoofing the Alien scene. I guess Stephen thought the little dancing alien would make Henry forget all that terrifying shit he had just shown him. Wrong!

But it doesn’t stop there. No, just less than one hour later, Stephen was at it again. If you didn’t know, Henry is both enamored with and scared of E.T. He worries that he will look up and see E.T.’s head staring at him but he loves watching the movie. I had a very gross, plastic-ish E.T. doll as a child. I recently found it in Twin Falls and brought it back with me, although I won’t let anyone touch it because the plastic-ish stuff is peeling off the doll.



Well, after the YouTube fiasco, Stephen called Henry into the bathroom to look at something in shower. And you guessed it—Stephen had placed that E.T. doll behind the shower curtain. Poor choice, Stephen, poor choice.

Things have gotten better recently, though. After weeks of looking at the stupid E.T. doll lying on my bedroom floor waiting for me to shove it somewhere in the closet, I watched Henry throw E.T. into one of those big Tupperware storage bins also lying on the floor waiting for me to shove it somewhere in the closet. He didn’t know I was watching. I think it may have been an empowering moment for him. He used a lot of force. He can also walk into a room by himself now, although he prefers if Wyatt goes first when the lights are off.