Bad Parenting

[Valin]

TAS

Ross Kaminsky

3.22.12

 

I have a confession to make. Please don't tell child protective services after reading the following.

 

For some reason, my 4-year old son is obsessed with zombies. There's a plastic figure of a zombie crawling out of the ground which he always wants to look at in the "SkyMall" catalog when we take him on an airplane.

 

Both he and my 6-year old daughter ask me to chase them (slowly) around the house while I pretend to be a "person-eating zombie."

 

So, in an example of extremely bad parenting, last night I brought them over to the computer and put on a YouTube video clip from the classic horror movie "Night of the Living Dead." We watched several minutes of zombies chasing and biting people, and people defending themselves with firearms and blowtorches. Then we watched a video -- which my kids thought was an actual documentary -- of how to identify and kill zombies. (FYI, zombies don't play basketball, don't like fire, and to kill one you hit it in the head -- not in the knees -- with a baseball bat.)

 

I did explain to my kids, who were then getting a little worried, that since zombies don't wear jackets there are no zombies up the in the Colorado mountains where we live. I explained that jacketless zombies live in warm places like California and Texas and Florida, to which my daughter, always concerned for the welfare of others, asked "are the people OK?" I explained that everyone in California has a baseball bat.

 

(Snip)