“I’m Trying To Make My Brain Scary”

Kid attempts to frighten herself by reënacting Salem witch trials, asks Daddy to be “the ghost”

Kina has lately become obsessed with a Ted Ed video about the Salem witch trials, insisting on watching it every day. If you, either as a sympathetic watcher of Ted Ed videos or as a loyal reader of this newsletter, have watched said video, you will know that it is Very Creepy¹ (and one of the better animated Ted Ed videos, I would offer).

As we were getting ready this morning, she was role-playing an ergot-addled Betty Parris in my bedroom and waddling towards me like a zombie, until she suddenly jumped in shock and ran into my arms, having finally scared herself after several days of ghost-embellished animated hallucinations. So I wrote about it, but now that I am writing this, Kina is calling out from her bedroom to ask about today’s edition and if the spooky eyes were real. I yelled back to tell her they were a joke and that we wouldn’t watch that video anymore.

Imagine having to try to make your brain scary—youth is wasted on the young.

dad

1. In the bath tonight, Kina started saying “prickling skin… prickling skin…” which spooked me terribly but seemed funny enough to her.