Monster Is As Monster Does

When I was a child one of my favorite TV characters was the Cookie Monster, from Sesame Street. He was scary chiefly for the rapaciousness with which he would wipe out baked goods. Ever since then I've thought that the word 'monster' has connotations of cuteness rather than terror.

Years later I had a colleague who had nicknamed his son 'monster'. This seemed odd, because young K did not seem monstrous at all. He was rather quiet, and on the whole quite unobtrusive for a little boy. Much as I loathed children then (and they still set my nerves on edge today) he seemed a rather tolerable creature. His greatest vice was a secret hunger for ice cream. Well, it was a secret from his mother. She was trying to protect him from sucrose by denying him access to it. He subverted the ban by begging for dessert from strangers at dinner parties when his mummy was looking the other way. What she did not know did not hurt her until she had to deal with his sugar high. Then all hell broke loose.

She would glare accusingly at us while we looked back over our dessert bowls with inscrutable expressions and an air of complete innocence. Not only would butter not have melted in our mouths, it would have probably spouted a layer of icing with cherries on top.

And now, many moons later, I have a monster of my own. This beast is a neatness monster. Which is really cool because I am a neat-freak myself (that's what I call it; the clinical term is obsessive-compulsive). The first observable sign of his deviant nature is visible when you watch TV in front of him. He makes a grab for the remote control and carefully tucks it away in the remote control pocket. I won’t bother explaining what sort of device a remote control pocket is. Suffice it to say that he has a desperate need to put stuff back where it belongs.

Sometimes it reaches ridiculous heights. I've watched dumbfounded as he emptied the contents of a drawer, just so that he could put everything back in the drawer where it was meant to be.

Weirdo.

Who am I kidding? I'm quite proud of the little tyke. He’s headstrong, hedonistic, attention-seeking, overactive, slightly addled and smells odd sometimes. But he has that one trait which he holds in common with me, and that exempts him from the general disdain in which I regard other children.

Monster.

Mine.

Enough said.