It was an uncharacteristically loud evening in our house tonight. Tim took the day off to spend it with the good folks at the MVA to renew his license. When he got home this evening the kids begged him to play one of their favorite games, Monsters. Basically this involves daddy being a monster and hiding in the closet in our bedroom and then the kids have to go look for him. When they find him he jumps out and everyone screams at the top of their lungs!

As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up in an old farmhouse. The community was comprised of mostly historic homes. The little town I lived in used to be a large shipping port and was quite a bustling town but by the time we moved in, a century had passed and it was a quiet, peaceful little place where everyone was local. The neighbors used to tell us stories of how all the older houses were haunted, and which spirits supposedly walked their halls. (On a side note, I was once asked to housesit for a woman down the street and when I came over to meet with her, she told me she would rather I didn’t actually stay in the house, as the ghost was not familiar with me and she didn’t want to make me uncomfortable.) Having heard these stories as a child, I wondered if my own house was haunted, though my little eyes and ears never found any proof.

The closest my imagination ever got was when my own parents would play a game very similar to Monsters with us. My mother’s favorite hiding spot was the closet in their bedroom and my father’s was the basement. (I should say cellar. Our basement was quite terrifying with its dusty concrete floors, hanging cobwebs, occasional black snake, and its dirt filled crawl spaces.) They would rattle the doors and make scary sounds all to the delight and terror of my sister and I. We would hold hands and muster up the courage to look for them (Knowing very well exactly where they were, and exactly what they were doing.) But in my child’s mind I would pretend it was one of those ghosts and it was our job to find them and stop them. Inevitably we would track down my mother first, because obviously going to the basement would be far less scary with her leading the way. She would jump out, we would scream, then we would all look for dad. We knew he was right inside the basement door, and we would challenge each other to be the one to open it. Sometimes he would surprise us by bursting though and send us all scampering and screaming. It was an odd pastime, but one we thoroughly enjoyed as small children and we often begged them to play.

And while I can’t stand the screaming and squealing, I am glad to see that my children have adopted a game very similar to the one we enjoyed. It’s just too bad we don’t have a horror film-esque basement to really test their resolve! Ha!