Stranger danger

Most children won't hesitate to sit on Santa's lap or offer a hug to a theme park cartoon character come to life. I remember being at the grand opening of a Burger King years ago when the Burger King himself invited a group of us kids to come up on stage. His magic had been sub-par and his exaggerated beard and mustache were so artificial looking that they weren't so much accessories to his costume as they were impediments. Nonetheless I, like most kids, jumped at the chance to do his bidding.

The exception to this is the kid who immediately starts crying and clinging to Mom or Dad for fear of being handed over to whatever super-human cretin is before him. Those kids I always saw as immature crybabies, overly paranoid and underloved. Now I wonder if they aren't the smart ones. After all, what doofus runs up to an oversized plushy he doesn't know from Adam? Maybe these kids weren't so afraid of the character as they were of what would become of the mindless masses rushing up to it. Looking back, those screams were probably the prophetic cries of a kid who foresaw the eventual demise of kinder-civilization as we know it. Good times. Good times.