i blame michael jackson

Last night, She Who Does Not Obey told me she couldn’t go to sleep because she was afraid of zombies. (Freakin' zombies!)

In the end it turned out she could. It was later than I had been hoping for but that is often the case for many non-zombie related reasons I shall not go into at this time.

She had hinted at a zombie-phobia before, but it had never really caused a problem.

Then, this morning, she was shuffling slowly along, getting ready for summer camp, when a horrified cry rang out from the bathroom. I raced to her side, after putting the last few items into her lunchbag, picking up a dirty sock, and hiding the toast scraps from the rampaging black labs.

It was a Catastrophe of Monumental Proportions!

She had accidentally scraped something off her teeth with her fingers right after wiping herself but before washing her hands!

She was unclear as to where the something went after she got it off her teeth. She had immediately washed her hands and then brushed her teeth, but she had still PUT HER FINGERS IN HER MOUTH WITHOUT WASHING HER HANDS AND DIDN’T KNOW WHERE THE SOMETHING WENT. She may have swallowed it!

I told her that this was okay and that a one-time failure in the bathroom hygiene department wasn’t going to make her sick/kill her/turn her into a zombie (I don't believe I actually mentioned zombies at this point). But she refused to listen to my logic and positively refused to shuffle along any further.

Then she suddenly developed a bad belly as she is wont to do. So I called her bluff and called Grandma to look after her (Grandma, alas, was not available). She positively refused to go to Grandma's anyway.

Then she finally revealed to me that the problem was actually three-pronged.

First it was the NOT WASHING HER HANDS thing.

Then it was her Slight Belly Ache.

Third and most important of all was the T-Word!
(which is our current code for the Michael Jackson Thriller video)

Curse you Michael Jackson!

It’s all his fault really.

If only SWDNO's dance school had not presciently decided to do a medley of MJ songs at the year-end recital, including Thriller and zombie dancers who recreated moves from the video. Then Drama Queen (SWDNO's 11-year-old cousin) wouldn't have seen it and been intrigued, prompting me to tell her about the video.

Drama Queen wanted to watch the video but she didn’t want to watch it alone - she tried once but couldn't make it all the way through. Her 8-year-old brother Destructo and SWDNO were curious as well and refused to leave the room for the viewing.

It was then I lost my mind, thinking it would be okay because I remembered the video as being really funny. I had completely forgotten about how it’s really not so funny until the zombies start to dance. Plus I forgot that 8-year olds have a very underdeveloped sense of black humour at least where horror movies are concerned.

SWDNO claimed it was okay and I thought I had dodged a bullet. In any case, I didn’t hear any more about it until last week when Michael Jackson decided to up and die on me. His sense of black humour was apparently quite developed.

When that happened, it seemed to have unleashed a zombie horde into the world at large. She could not go to camp because she was afraid of the them.

I told her zombies don’t exist, but she wasn’t buying it.

I told her zombies don’t exist, but if they did exist they only come out at night, but she insisted they come out in the day. I felt bad about that because that is in fact a lie – zombies do not have a problem with daylight.

(She is now very suspicious about the nocturnal habits of werewolves as well)

I told her that zombies are very stupid and slow and that if the idiots in Shaun of the Dead can defeat them, anyone can. I did not mention that the majority of the cast of Shaun of the Dead end up dead or zombies or dead zombies.

I described the scene where Shaun and his friend Ed go through Shaun's record collection and have oodles of time to debate the merits of various albums before deciding which ones to throw at the advancing zombies. She thought that was funny.

After she had determined that there were still things to laugh at in this zombie-plagued world, I was finally able to convince her to go down the stairs, put on her sandals, pick up her cricket bat and start beating her way to the car.

I was 45-minutes late for work.