Neverending Nightmare

Now that I am "grown up" it is easy to forget the sheer horror I felt as a kid after having a particularly scary nightmare. I rarely have nightmares nowadays, and when I do they are made up of spiders, tornadoes, car crashes, or graduations where I discover I hadn't attended class all semester. These nightmares have an affect on me, but not the way nightmares surely did when I was a child and they were made up of monsters and my inability to scream or run away.

Jack had a nightmare recently about vampires. In his nightmare he was bitten by a vampire and I was shot and killed. He was, and still is, disturbed. While the possibility of him being bitten by a vampire is nonexistent, the possibility of me getting shot does exist even if that possibility is the minutest of the minute.

But it's not the part about me getting shot that has him upset. It's the vampire part. Usually when the sun comes up, bad dreams go away. This one just won't leave for Jack. He asked me to look at his neck for any marks. I did and told him I didn't see anything. "Look for two little spots close together." Nothing. "Why are you asking? Did you hurt your neck?" "No," he said. "The dream just seemed so real."

Ah. I was looking for vampire bites.

Then later he came up to me and said, "If I was a vampire, I'd run into the sun to die because I wouldn't want to live my life as a vampire. I don't want to drink blood."

I began reassuring him again that he has not been and would not be bitten by a vampire. EVER.

"I guess it wouldn't be so bad," he said, "if you and dad and Luke and Meemaw wouldn't mind if I bit you and then we could all be vampires together. And we would get to fly."

So then Luke and Jack started a conversation about the super powers held by vampires and Jack finally woke from his nightmare.