Scared
Sunday 
around evening time 
Mystie
Matt has begun to read The Lord of the Rings to the boys (and me, and Ilse was in the same room playing with her necklaces). He read The Hobbit to them last year, and I was surprised at their comprehension and even retention, although they always remember more days, weeks, or months after when it is their own idea. If you asked a question of them, however, you would guess they had been sleeping during the entire reading.
So this evening Matt read the chapter where Gandalf tells Frodo the history of the Ring. Afterward, Matt asked Hans what part he thought was scary. He said he would tell him what was scary after we got to the scary parts.
Ten minutes later or so, after getting ready for bed, Hans came back down to me to tell me he remembered a part that had been a little scary: Gullom’s long fingers. After talking about that a bit, the conversation continued:
Mom: “Are you ok being scared, or do you not like it?”
Hans: “Well, when I’m scared, my heart just gets a little hot. That’s how I feel scared.”
Mom: “Yeah….Would you like Dad to read books with scary parts or would you prefer it if we only read nice books that are always happy?”
…this, my friends, really was his honest-to-goodness reply…
Hans: “Well, it’s good to read things that are scary so that you can get brave. If you want to be a knight or a fireman or a police officer you have to learn to be brave. But I just like scary stories because I think they are interesting. I don’t want to be any of those things. I want to be a garbage truck driver because I think it’d be easy. You just drive around and pick up garbage cans. But I still like it when dad reads scary things. And, it’s only a little scary, because it’s happening in Book-Land.”
I was floored. And amused. And thrilled. And I wonder if he will continue with this opinion when the Nazgul show up in the next chapter.
What a wise young man. Such discernment! We read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings this past summer as our read-aloud. I don’t remember my daughter (age 9 at the time) being scared or even uneasy, but when she asked to watch the movies after we were done, we replied, “Absolutely not! You’d be sleeping in our room for the next year!”