Horror for Kids

"Daddy, I don't want to go to the beach anymore."

"But you really like the beach, why?"

GoofGirl paused for a minute, submerged her head in her pillow for a moment and said, "I saw this video on your iPad, a lot of people were on the beach and suddenly there is a monster and there is blood and the monster is eating people."

"Sweetheart, did the monster have the mouth of a shark and the legs of an octopus?"

"Uh-huh," she said, almost crying, "How do know?"

When we saw the SyFy channel was running a movie called Sharktopus about a genetically engineered shark-octopus hybrid invented by the Navy to fight Somali pirate there was no question about what MamaGoof and I would be doing that evening. It was everything we could have hoped for, the bad acting, the unnecessary but constant presence of girls in bikinis, and Eric Roberts playing a hard-drinking mad scientist and wondering how it all came to this.

I must have grabbed the trailer on my iPad to send to friends and well...



"Oh, nina, I'm sorry, you should not have seen that. It wasn't for children, but it was just a movie it wasn't real."

"Daddy, did you watch that movie?"

"I did, with mommy. It was called Sharktopus."

"Why, it was horrible!"

"No sweetheart, it wasn't horrible. It was really dumb," I explained.

"Why did you watch a dumb movie?"

"Sometimes it is fun to watch a dumb movie and make fun of it."

"Why did they make a dumb movie?"

"I don't think they knew it would be dumb when they made it. It just came out that way." I wasn't quite ready to explain Roger Corman to her.

"So there is no such thing as sharktopus?"

"No, it's a ridiculous idea. Half-shark, half octopus - that's crazy and it definitely isn't kosher."

"OK daddy, can you come into my bed with me."

"Sure sweetheart." I got off the floor and lay down on her bed beside her. We sat together for a few minutes quietly and then she pounced on me. Looking down on me, she grinned and hissed, "Sharktopus!"

"You aren't scared anymore are you?" I asked.

"No! And if I do meet a sharktopus, I'll get him with a guillotine!"

I hate to tell her she can't just guillotine her way out of all of her problems, but we've discussed enough weighty matters for one night.