When is it okay to like zombies?

Life sets up interesting challenges when you have a child. Life is a bit more interesting for me because I have two... one of each flavour, so there are no lessons learnt earlier to fall back on since they like different things.

I got a call from my son this afternoon asking that he wanted to make a book with some photos he looked up on the internet. He said it was book of monsters (obviously he would since he just turned nine), he told me that he had all the pages ready and all I had to do was print the images for him on separate pages and staple them together.

I promised him I would when I got home.

It was when I got home that he presented me with my first glimpse of images. The first was a ghost... a really silly black & white mirror trick image circa early 19-somethings (fine), the second was of a werewolf (kind of gory, very gothic and an artist's rendition... fine). The third was of a sexy vixenish teen vampire with a come-hither look, sharp incisors and blood lust mouth, circa Twilight vamp (a deep breath but fine, boys will be boys, right?).

Then it got a bit more interesting and a tad bit disturbing...


His next image choice was that of a mummy, not your typical cartoon mummy or cheesy horror film attempt, no this one was gory with menacing glowing eyes, peeling bandages and revealing femur bones – not the sort of image you'd associate with an innocent pre-ten boy. A shudder but, hey, okay... ish. It was the next one that broke me to ask myself “when is it okay to like zombies?”

This image was graphic in a dog-eat-dog sort of way. Shudder, shudder. Yikes, and this was the image that my little boy preferred. I quickly glanced at the other images he could have selected... frankly not one appealed to me because I guess you can't make a zombie cute like you can other monster staples.

I mean other monsters can be kind of cool or cute. A little batty Dracula, a big bolt dolt Frankenstein, shaking in jeans and college jersey werewolf, a hip-shaking mummy, even a teen-idol ghoul... but ever see a zombie pull a cutie pie look?

I told him that I would not like to print the pictures as they were a bit too gory and unsavoury for my tastes. Naturally I was speaking gibberish to his ears so he asked me “why?” I told him i'd print the pictures when he was bit older as I didn't think he should have these pictures in any form since they were creepy... besides they might give his sister nightmares (I did not mention what it might do to me and that it was giving me nightmares already thinking that he has spent time selecting these gory images).


Little boys are great when they are so little. What he did next reminded me that my little boy was really still the little boy I know and love.

He turned to me and said “okay, but you have to print me a big picture of Iron man,” and as gone. Just like that.

A little phantom that one... ;-)