Another one of my famed "moments of clarity" occurred to me the other day.  I finally realized why adults purposefully scare small children.

When I  was younger, about six or seven, my Aunt, whose name is  _________, and my Dad, told me a horrible story to keep me from lying. 

Note:  My Dad actually thought of, or maybe remembered, the story from his childhood, but my aunt was the one that I remember telling me about it and making it as terrifying as possible.

Note to self, insert something other than Lyn in blank space.

This horrible story, involved a monster called the Eatumwholeski.  I know this word is complex, so I will break out the etymology here.  The word can be broken up into four parts.  Here they are:

Eat-um-whole-ski

1. eat:  Ok, self explanatory

2. um:  Slang for them, but here, when combined with Eat, makes Eat them.

3. whole:  One full part.  In this case when combined with Eat-um, means eat them whole.  Roughly translated so far we have some type of monster that eats you whole.

4. ski:  Polish male.

So, as illustrated, an Eatumwholeski is a male creature that eats people whole and is Polish.  So far so good, but this only scratched the surface of the horror of the eatumwholeski.  Just eating people whole is not enough.  The way the eatumwholeski goes about his business is both terrifying and heinous (as if anything could be both terrifying and heinous, well this is!)

My Aunt informed me that when a child lies, an eatumwholeski moves into their closet and waits until the ungrateful liar child is asleep.  In the middle of the night, the eatumwholeski shambles out of the closet and positions himself at the foot of the sleeping liar child's bed.  The monster then proceeds to pull, nay rip, out the belly button of the sleeping liar child.  This is done to let the air out of the liar child.  Any eatumwholeski will tell you that eating a large inflated life raft is harder that an deflated one.  This same principle applies to liar children.  After the air is gone, the eatumwholeski eats the liar child whole. 

Ok, now that we understand this whole eatumwholeski business we can get down to why my Aunt and Dad found it necessary to tell me about them.  She had to know that it would royally fuck me up. 

It did indeed royally fuck me up, and as a result, I have a problem with closets even today.  For about three years in my early teens, I could not even face the closet while I was sleeping.  The closet always had to be closed during the hours of darkness.  I used to put toys in front of the closet door so that it would cause a ruckus if something opened the door and attempted to eat me.  

So why did my Aunt tell me tell me such a life altering story?  I was not a liar child.  I told some fibs, but nothing along the lines of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."  I mean, I was seven.  The only thing I had the capacity to lie about what was whether I actually ate all my peas, or fed them to the dog.  I do not think that lying about uneaten side dishes is a solid reason to fuck up a child for life.

There had to be a reason for her telling me this horrible lie, and the other day, I figured it out. 

The other day, I was hiding in the hallway with a scary mask on waiting for my children to pass by on their way to bed.  As they got near me, I jumped out of the shadows and screamed at them.  I can honestly tell you that words cannot describe how quickly young angelic faces can contort into vestiges of sheer panic and terror.  It is one of the most enjoyable things to witness.  It is even better if you can get them to pee their pants.  My success rate with my 9 year old daughter is about 70%.  I know that sounds impressive, but she is an easy pee.  My goal is 95%.

So, the reason why adults scare children, is simply because it is damn funny.  I surely do enjoy doing it to my kids.  I like doing it to other people's kids even more (I do not have to console them when they are not my kids).  I bet my Aunt laughed herself silly each and every day thinking of me constantly worrying about being eaten alive by some sort of monstrosity in my closet.

Ok, I need to go, my daughter has been sassing me a lot lately and I think it is time to tell her about my closet dwelling polish friend.

One more thing.  I spoke with my Dad after I wrote this and he told me that he got the idea from a guy named Doodles Weaver.  Apparently, Doodles Weaver was an actor back in the olden days (1950's) and had a children's variety show on TV in the that aired in Southern California.  On this show, Doodles Weaver talked about Eatumwholeskis (not exclusively, I am sure he did lots of zany things).  This is where my dad heard about eatumwholskis.  I do not know if Doodles Weaver invented eatumwholskis, but whether he did or not, that is a damned evil thing to talk about on a children's variety show.  Can you imagine if Barney, or the Wiggles started talking about a monster that would rip out your belly button and eat you if you lied?

For information on Doodles Weaver, click here.