"I don't understand boys"

A Monster Story

When my oldest son was about 3 years old, I bought him an action toy. It was a a figure based on an Edgar Rice Burroughs' story from the 1950s. You can hardly find them today. Who, after all, even remembers Edgar Rice Burroughs or the spectacular creatures that populated his stories? But there they were, on the bargain rack at Big Lots.

The one I chose was a monster of some sort, black, with huge shoulders and menacing teeth. I paid the cashier $3.95 and took it home to present to my son.

He loved it. It became one of his favorite toys.

A few weeks later, he accidentally dropped something on the monster and the arm broke off. He was devastated. This terrible, horrible monster, with fangs and a fearsome face, was now left with only one arm. One of his favorite monsters, now headed to the Island of Misfit Toys.

Life can be terribly unkind to a three year-old boy.

After he was put to bed, I wondered if there wasn't some way to address the problem. I could buy him a new monster, of course, but I realized it was unlikely I would find the same one. I think it was the only one available when I bought it and it was unlikely that I could replace it.

My wife, however, already had some expertise in replantation surgery on toys. She tried several times to reattach the limb with glue, but the arm kept breaking off.

After several attempts over a period of days, the maternal authorities finally announced that there was nothing else they could do. There was no hope for the monster. My son's hopes were finally extinguished.

We tried to assuage his grief, but it availed nothing. For several nights he slunk off sadly to bed.

On the third or fourth day of his bereavement, I got an idea. An awful idea. A horrible, terrible, awful idea.

That night, I searched around and found some red model paint and discovered a small, pencil-sized brush in the kitchen drawer. I opened the paint and dipped the brush in it. I applied the paint on the now armless shoulder of the monster—lots of paint, so that it dripped down the side of the monster in a gruesome stream.

I set it proudly on the kitchen window sill so that it might dry overnight.

The next morning, my early-rising wife made her way into the kitchen, and discovered the monster, now more gruesome than before, staring at her from the window sill. If she screamed, I didn't hear it. I was still asleep.

I don't remember exactly what she said to me after I crawled out of bed that morning , but I'm pretty sure it included her oft-repeated exclamation—the lament, I'm pretty sure, of many mothers with male children (and a husband): "I'll never understand boys."

When my son woke up, I presented him with the now modified monster, replete with newly acquired gore.

He took it in his hand. His eyes widened, he turned the monster from side to side. He touched it all over. He looked at it from every angle. Slowly, a grin formed. And the grin grew into a broad smile. Finally, he began dancing around the house, holding the monster high in the air.

After his reverie abated, he took the monster reverently to his mother. And said proudly, "Look Mommy, look at my monster!!!"

My wife set down her coffee. She examined the gruesome object with suspicion. Then she turned and examined me—with even greater suspicion. "I DON'T understand boys," she said again, and resumed her breakfast.

Not only did he like the newly adorned toy. He loved it. He liked it far better than he had before. It became, for a while, the chief object of his boyish adoration.

I don't know whatever happened to the toy. Undoubtedly it was the victim of one of the many decluttering purges conducted in our house over the years. But if I ever find it again, I'm going to wrap it and give it as a gift to one of his own boys to see what they make of the gruesome one-armed monster my son loved so well.