It is Tuesday of Everyday Crazy week here at CoupleDumb and, apparently, there is a tiger under our sons’ bed. Is it bad that we didn’t try to disagree with this idea? After all, the tiger kept the little bastard in bed.

          Paul says: When our three-year-old son came out of his bedroom an hour after bedtime with a story of the tiger that was lurking under his bed, my first reaction was ‘don’t be ridiculous. That’s where the monsters sleep’. Like a good dad, I brought my son back into his room, flipped on the lights, and began to search under the bed for the tiger. As I bent down to demonstrate the safety of the area, every horror movie ever made came flashing through my mind. I found my heart racing a little, not because of a tiger (there simply was not enough room under the bed for a whole tiger) but because of the very real possibility of demon clowns ala Poltergeist.  

          I do not know that being rational in the face of fear helps. When it comes to our everyday crazy, those little fears, not the big life stopping phobias, can become something that we can’t seem to shake. Sometimes we do not want to blow off the fear since it can be fun. I site Steven King and rollercoasters as example. My dilemma always comes from trying to explain this to the kids. Finally, I realized that I can’t. Enjoying fear only comes when we have control.  Before you hop onto a rollercoaster, even without an engineering degree, every person does a little mental stress analysis on the construction material and assesses the built-in redundancies.

          Unfortunately, kids do not have that available. Both of my boys are still in that ‘magical thinking’ developmental stage. Where I knew that there was no tiger under the bed, mainly because the clearance between floor and bed is about 7 inches, my three year old was not so convinced since magic tigers can fit anywhere. And, truth be told, I did not know that there was no tiger. What I knew was that compressed tiger held no danger for me.

          If my son was going to be the cutest little dipshit in the universe then he was going to be an unafraid cute little dipshit.  He wanted magical thinking. Well, nobody does irrational, magical fantasy like I do. If he was afraid of compressible tigers then I was going to give him the resources to battle the most badass flattened feline that ever did crawl under a bed. First we did a room sweep; under the bed, in the closet, behind the door. Then I got my son’s stuffed tiger from the zoo. This was his very own transformational bodyguard. Who better to beat down some punk-ass rough tiger then another meaner tiger? For good measure, he also went to sleep with a Nerf pistol in one hand and a Nerf rifle in the other. I am happy to say that that piece of shit tiger did not have the balls to show up again.   

          Lee says: As a Mother, there are some things I wish I never knew. One of those things is seeing how my husband parents. I swear sometimes it’s cringe-worthy. No, Mommies would never do that to their babies. No, Mommies would never write a post and refer to her little angel and God’s little miracle as a ‘bastard’ and ‘dipshit’. No, a Mommy would never arm a child with Nerf weapons to kill an imaginary tiger that is under the bed.

          Moms do things like believe the whole Harry Potter hype that his mother saved him with her love. We like to swaddle our children in our love and have them find safety in our arms. We fight monsters with our Mommy glares and declare their bedrooms safe from ninja demons because of our awesome Mommy powers. Ultimately I think, WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT!

          Personally I’ll take weapons any day to fight the squished pussy under his bed. Maybe even a bowie knife. Mom’s are badass people and Lily Potter might have protected Harry with her love but if she would have had a chance she would have shoved her foot up Voldemort’s ass. So, to sum up, love is great but weapons and cool martial arts are better.