the monster mash

Dear Marianne,

Craig was away to London last night to meet his old mate Dirk for a drink at the Hole in the Wall.This concerned Anna in two ways, firstly because Craig does all the cooking, so it would be my stuff she would be eating for tea, and secondly because he is the Monster Puncher, that is, he makes sure that no monsters get near Anna and Mike's bedroom. So,I had to explain that Daddy always leaves a trap when he goes away, and this then led to a tense dialogue about the nature of the trap and the inevitable question, why punch them if you can trap them?

I was only in this predicament because we had to make stuff up in the first place. You read them a monster story, you let them watch Monsters Inc., they go to bed cuddling their favourite monster toy and then you spend the rest of the night telling them there are no such things as monsters and to stop worrying about them.
I have spent many nights shouting at monsters under beds, generally making sure that they are good and not bad monsters; it seemed easier to invent Daddy the renowned Monster Puncher for Anna.

You have to keep an eye on the made up stuff though. For three years all the children thought that Eddy, our bald cat, was from Father Christmas, then two of them worked out that Father Christmas was made up and so we had to come clean about the cat's more humble beginnings in Scotland. Now Archie is on the verge of discovering that Santa is us, slightly merry and very tired trying to shove stocking shaped selection boxes into slightly too small stocking shaped stockings, without being heard or getting the giggles. But he is not quite there yet.I know this because the other day the whole tooth fairy made up stuff, came home to roost.

Now, I don't usually go on about Archie being my step son,but you need some background here. When you have children who are not always with you, ordinary things get complicated. For example, there is the coming and going of clothing. There have been a number of times when I have sent clothes back to Archie's nursery or school just to have them sent back and told they belong to me, only to discover they were Archie's, but from his Mum's house. On the other hand I have sent him back to nursery wearing nursery clothes which I thought were clothes from his Mum's house. Are you keeping up?

Its not only stuff, its ideas and attitudes which differ from home to home - so you have to tread carefully around issues such as Father Christmas and the tooth fairy; you just don't know how far the other parent has gone. And no we don't sit down and discuss this sort of thing regularly because we are too busy worrying about whether to leave each other to cut hair and finger nails.

At some point between eight - when his last baby tooth came out - and the other day when another tooth came out, Craig and I had decided that Archie must be past tooth fairy stage (he is ten). So when he proudly presented me with the tooth he had been twisting and pulling for a couple of days, I reminded him, to "... pretend you are going to put it under your pillow for the tooth fairy" because we didn't want to upset Anna, whose teeth are also falling out and who has become quite rich under the patronage of her tooth fairy recently. He responded by saying,"Doesn't the tooth fairy exist then?!". It was quite a tense moment, we had relatives over, it suddenly felt really very hot in the kitchen. Craig and I looked at each other for help, but no fairy godmother intervened.
Eventually, I mumbled unconvincingly, "of course the tooth fairy exists, what are you like..." but he looked a little lost. I heard him questioning his older siblings and cousins about it outside.

Craig, was all for telling Archie again, but I couldn't now bare it, so Craig (who didn't want to ferret around under a ten year old's pillow) convinced him that after the age of ten tooth fairies pick up the tooth from the, wait for it...fridge! You'd have to wonder about your parents sanity at least by this point. Anyway, Archie was not to be swayed and he duly put his tooth in an envelope in the fridge. At four in the morning I woke in a cold sweat and sent Craig down to put money in the envelope and part freeze his nadgers.

In the morning Archie came down to retrieve the treasure - which in this house is fifty pence per tooth. "Oh" said Archie disappointed. "What?" said I irritatedly. "I usually get £1". This was it then, the mystery and the magic is nothing compared to the money. "Well", I said, "would that be when a tooth falls out at your Mum's house?" "Yes". "Well that's because she has a different payment scale than us for teeth". "You mean you're the tooth fairy?!" "Yes!" you wee money grabbing bastard - I thought the last bit. And that was that.
I felt crap, but it had to happen. We had a chat afterwards about how great it was to be growing up, and how good it would be to be the big brother who would keep the mystery going for Anna and Mike, but I could see he was struggling.

I can completely understand Archie's reluctance to let go of the mystery, the made up stuff, his childhood. This time next year he will be at secondary school with a bunch of nutters (other children)who will all be taller and wider than him. If he gets cornered I'm sure he would love to able to say, "My Dad's a Monster Puncher and he can take anyone of you easy". But he can't, not without being laughed at, so he will have to be hard and macho and fight his own corner using his wit, cunning and perhaps fists.

Anyway you will be glad to hear, I'm sure, that the Monster Puncher arrived home safely from the big city. A bit wobbly and giggly of course, but luckily the trap he set had worked and there were no monsters to be dealt with, otherwise we may have had to call on Archie to sort them out.

Rx