The Jabberwocky and the Foot

When I was young, the Jabberwocky embodied all that was lurking around in my imagination waiting to nab me as I went into a dark room.  My parents loved that one Alice and Wonderland with the live characters, fun music, many cameos, and the freaky, slimy, red-eyed Jabberwocky that made the lights go out and lightning flash in the movie.  They just couldn't understand why anyone would hate that movie, and pulled it out to refresh my memory regularly.

No one understood why birthdays were never the same for Alice.

Who wouldn't love that face?

So when my son saw a minuscule clip of a movie-within-a-movie that involved a dismembered foot and refused to go into any unoccupied room without someone, I was a bit more sympathetic than I would have been otherwise.  So while I was buzzing off a couple inches of his hair on the back porch, I tried to get a good idea of what exactly he was afraid of, since I hadn't seen it.

He explained the scary scene, which I suspect was meant to be comedy since the lady got kicked in the nose by the foot.  So after trying the whole, "Your imagination is only in your mind and you are the boss of your mind" tack, I asked him what a lone foot could do that was so scary, anyway.  After some speculation, we decided that a foot could only kick, a little, or wiggle, and definitely could not kill anyone like he was imagining.  Then I told him that since he was the boss he could have an imaginary hammer, or even... a feather! He thought that was hilarious.

One thing led to another and suddenly I realized that my son now had an imaginary friend that was a foot.  In keeping with strict traditions within our family, he christened his friend with a very intuitive and insightful name: "Foot."  Before I knew it, Foot was taking a shower, getting ready to leave with us, and even got his seatbelt on first.  (Foot was clearly male, since he indicated that, no, Foot wasn't wearing ANY nail polish.  Definitely boy.)

I was kept abreast of the situation with regular updates on Foot's well-being:  "Foot is happy that he has a family now."  "Foot can borrow MY shoes, so he doesn't get burned on the pavement."  "Foot will protect me from the other evil feet that are trying to kill me."

Oh.  Rats.  That was going so well.  In a weird, alarm-the-school-psychologist kind of way, anyway.