It was the creepiest children’s book I’ve ever read. Ada brought to me “Love You Forever” by
Robert Munsch, and asked me to read it to her last night. It started out well enough. A young mom rocked her infant son in her arms
while telling him, “I’ll love you forever, I’ll love you for always, As long as
I’m living, my baby you’ll be.” The phrasing was a little awkward, but the
sentiment was fine.
At age two the boy was a little terror, pulling books off of
shelves and flushing his mother’s watch down the toilet. I thought, “Yeah, I get it. I’ve blogged about stuff like that.” The still young mom snuck into her son’s room
and held him while he was sleeping, rocking him in her lap while repeating, “I’ll
love you forever, I’ll love you for always, As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll
be.”
Fast-forward seven years.
The boy was nine years old, and she was still creeping into his room to
hold her sleeping son. And then again at
age 15. I thought, “This is getting a little
strange.” This lady was on her hands and
knees, creeping into her teenage son’s bedroom to hold him while he was
sleeping. The smell alone would keep
most parents out of their teenaged son’s bedroom.
Turn the page, and the boy was a young man moving into a
home of his own. The middle-aged mom was
now driving across town in the dark, a ladder strapped to the roof of her car,
so that she could sneak into her adult son’s bedroom, sit on the bed, pickup
her sleeping adult son and rock him in her arms while reciting, “I’ll love you
forever, I’ll love you for always, As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”
I thought, “Cut the apron strings, lady.” This was more than a little weird. This guy must have been hitting the bottle
pretty hard to be sleeping through his mother’s B & E and never
waking-up while she held him. The old
broad must have been seriously strong, too, as her son was twice her size! If I were him, I’d have a taste-tester check
my breakfast cereal in the morning. The old
gal was one syringe away from Munchausen Syndrome by proxy.
The story continued to show the elderly mother calling her son
for a visit because she was quite ill.
The adult son went to his mother, held her in his lap while rocking in a
rocking chair, and recited back the poem his mother told him. Then he went home, went into his sleeping
infant daughter’s room, and rocked her in his arms, telling her the very same
words that he had just spoken to his mother.
I’m hoping this guy got therapy, and soon, or his adult
daughter will be calling the cops because some old creepy guy on a ladder will
be trying to break into her room at night to hold her and recite poetry while
she sleeps. This is why we still need the second
amendment.
As I finished the book, Ada squealed, “Go back to the page
about the toilet. That was funny!”
Whew!
No damage done.
Tonight, I’m burning my first book.
