This afternoon around 1:30, I heard Kamryn yelling “Mommy!  I need help!  I’m scared!”  My first assumption was that she had crawled up in her closet and couldn’t get down.  I didn’t jump up and run to her aid, though.  Instead I yelled back, “What’s wrong?”  Her response was “I’m scared!”

This was one of those bad mom moments when I hear my child in distress, but know it’s not as urgent as her words say.  She didn’t have the quivering panic in her voice like she does when she is really upset about something.  Plus, it’s not like she was waking from a bad dream in the middle of the night.  It’s a beautiful, sunny day and she was happily playing in my room at last check.

Eventually, I decided to go see what the problem was.  And when I say eventually I mean about 30 seconds passed (reserve your judgement for someone else).  I found her sitting on the floor in my room playing with Legos.  I asked her what she could possibly be afraid of and she pointed at this.

Lego Guy

I told her I didn’t understand.  She said:

I made this Lego Guy and I’m afraid that when I’m alone with him that his eyes are going to move and he’s going to be looking at me and he might say something.

I suggested that maybe she not build “guys” that have eyes, but that was completely absurd and an unacceptable solution.  I next proposed that she move out into the living room where Rory and I were so she wouldn’t be alone.  That was a satisfactory resolution to the problem.

It reminded me of my Catholic School days.  During either my 7th or 8th grade year I had watched The Seventh Sign with a bunch of my friends.  Shortly after watching the movie, we had gotten the brilliant idea of going over to the church after school and staring at the Virgin Mary.  I don’t really know what we expected, but I was sure that something was going to happen – either she would blink her eyes or cry or shout “Boo!”  Alas, the Blessed Mother never revealed her statue moving abilities to us and to this day, I do not like to look at religious sculptures or paintings – especially the ones where Jesus’ eyes follow you.