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Our ten-year-old saw video clips about snakes in Guam coming up through toilets, and now he would rather soil his pants than enter the bathroom.
We point out that Guam is two thousand miles away. He just says, “Snakes are everywhere.”
Of course, we immediately install very strict parental controls on the home network, but once he leaves the house, we cannot shield him from god knows what else is out there, so we make him an appointment at the Youth Counseling Center, and in the meantime we have provided adult diapers (size Small), the cost to be deducted from his allowance.
Just to see what we’re up against, I locate the videos online and watch them all: nasty-looking serpents lunging at the camera; grainy, subtitled news clips showing huge snakes coiled inside toilet bowls and sinks or slithering across the floor; incoherent hospital interviews with victims.
It’s ridiculous, exaggerated sensationalism, maliciously designed to spread fear, and I scoff.
Later, I find myself standing outside the bathroom, unwilling to open the door.
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Not me trying to convince my daughter that dinosaurs WON’T ACTUALLY peer into the bathroom window while she potties, only to be afraid myself after the thought has been planted, despite a nagging suspicion that Sharptooth has been dead since the late 80s. This was West!