When I was ten years old, two of my best friends were Kim and Melissa. We lived in the same neighborhood so we hung out a lot. One night we got together for a sleepover at Kim’s house. I, of course, was the good child. I was shy and quiet and backwards. So, I guess it makes sense that I was the one being “tortured” after dinner. They took my undies from my bag and hid them and a few other things I’d brought with me. When I went looking for something in my bag and realized my items had gone missing I was mortified. (Oh how easily embarrassed I became in those days.) Spoil sport I was and I threatened to leave if they didn’t give me my things back immediately. By the end of the night, I was figuring that my friends weren’t so bad after all.

Kim’s parents retreated to bed, leaving us to our wild sleepover madness.

“First one that goes to sleep gets toothpaste painted on their face!”

We decided to watch movies. After rifling through the VHS collection, we settled on The Good Son. Before then I had only seen Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone so I figured it couldn’t be too bad. Was I in for a treat! I don’t think I’d ever been so scared and there was definately no fear of me being the one to fall asleep first, or at all for that matter.

Since then, I’ve seen several movie titles released featuring some brand of evil child. The current new bad child is a girl named Esther in Orphan. (And I had really been considering adopting a child at some point in my life!) To this day the evil children in movies give me the creeps. I keep wondering what it is that makes the evil children so much more frightening than the evil adults. Maybe it’s just that I always think of kids as pure and innocent. To see a child commit such acts of heartless violence just seems other-worldly or something. It has no place. What do you think?