Pudgy-Fingered Gobbling Monstrosity

See? This is why I don't want children. We could probably replace the baked beans with a bowl of mice and and this pudgy-fingered gobbling monstrosity would scarf 'em down. And then he'd say something cutesy and midwestern with a scary grin on his face.

Halloween is fast approaching (October already, where did this year go?) and there's going to be the usual business with kids dressed up as ghosts and monsters coming round the house and throwing eggs. They will have been turfed out of their own homes by their parents so that they might learn an important lesson in life: If you want something from a stranger, put on the scariest demeanour you can, then go round his house with your buddies and make a threat. Offer your hapless victim a choice between vague misfortune and giving you what you want. Playing is how we learn :-) Fine, good, so long as they're having fun.

It is kind of cool that this sort of thing is so stereotyped, that society in general makes up the most absurd things for kids to be afraid of. Overdone icons like plastic spiders and bats aren't scary, and we tell kids they are. In every other Scooby-Doo episode and TV Halloween special kids told, over and over, that they're expected to be afraid of spooOOOOooky stuff. Which is good, because that means we're not exposing kids to things that are actually scary. If I ever see a little girl dressed up as 'rape' for Halloween I'll know the ruse is coming undone.

Garfield's Jim Davis explains:

'Ghosts aren't scary...' he told me before explaining that before writing the strips he went around to everyone he knew and asked them what truly scared them. The answer he got most often was 'being alone' or 'dying alone'.

That's why Halloween's great, it's the one night of the year you can't possibly be afraid of children. It kicks ass that a bunch of 10 years olds come to my house and make to fright me with their werewolf costumes. They've been completely suckered into thinking the worst thing they're going to have to face in life is plastic werewolves.

If they thought a little more outside the box they could stay home, and then have a different little kid phone my house every night at midnight and tell me that I will die in a fire. That would worry me.

Death of Garfield
Plan59 photoset

Created 2006-10-19 22:25:52 by 295 and filed under introspection