Monday, June 7, 2010

Strong Emotions

Here is the background to the story I'm about to tell: Xander has been going around saying, "The White Witch [from The Chronicles of Narnia] is bad." People have been agreeing with him. "Yes, the White Witch is bad."

On to the story: Tonight Erik caught Nick dropping his dinner food on the floor, so he reprimanded Nick, turned him around in his booster seat for "time out" and, to emphasize, said, "Bad."

Xander began to cry, the hard cry that you can tell is associated with a deeply felt emotion. He said something about the White Witch. A few minutes later, we deciphered what he meant. He had seen Erik saying "Bad" to Nick, probably while pointing for emphasis. He knew the White Witch was bad. It was devastating to him to hear his little brother being called the same thing as the White Witch (maybe he thought Nick was the same thing as the White Witch, or was accused of being the same thing?)

We hurried to explain that Nick was doing a bad thing, that Daddy was just pointing out the bad behavior. Nick was not actually bad, and neither were any of us in the family. Another word for what the White Witch was was "evil", and none of us was evil either, and we were never going to be. Plus the White Witch was in a movie and we were not. What happened in the movie didn't happen in real life.

As in that ubiquitous quote, we "had some 'splaining to do." Only time will tell what Xander took from what we said.

Xander proceeded to eat his dinner, satisfied for now. It reminded me of a couple of times that I felt a similar emotion at about the same age. In one instance I was taking an evening walk with my mom and dad and began crying. They realized after some discussion that I was crying because I thought they would someday die on the cross. I had learned about Jesus being crucified and got the idea that everyone would eventually die the same way.

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