The Odd Thing

Every child has one, right? That thing they are weirdly obsessed with for only God knows why.

For Seth and Sam, it’s alarms. Fire alarms and carbon monoxide alarms. It all started when they called them the beepers. Despite several warnings not to touch “the beepers", they inevitably did, causing a loud and startling beeping sound. This caused them to always stay far from the beeper, which unfortunately is plugged in next to our dining room table. Then, it turned into a full blown fear of the beeper. Every once and a while one of the boys would suddenly run screaming and crying to me, always pointing back to the beeper. Despite continual reassurances that it cannot hurt them, they were stilled scared. Most kids are scared of dogs, loud noises, heck, even water—but this?

One night after one of these silly outbursts, I rashly told the boys that when they are scared to just point at the alarm, and say, “No, no beeper. No beep. You don’t hurt me.” Well, that stuck. So now while they have mostly conquered their fear of the beeper, we hear some pretty funny conversation with this object.

The fear turned into an odd noticing of alarms every where we go. I kid you not: Seth especially points out the fire alarm in every single house we visit. Oh, and every single restaurant. And every store. Perhaps he is destined to be a fire fighter. Regardless, I feel much safer knowing that the boys are ever vigilant in fire safety.

On a completely different note, I have another basketball story. The boys are starting to recognize letters quite well. And in the Morris household, the “B” stands for “buzzer” (what they call the scoreboard from basketball games). No, not boy, baby, ball, or block: buzzer. Maybe it’s more surprising that it doesn’t stand for basketball, or in the theme of this post “beeper.”