Most monsters will tell you that they don’t care for the children whose closets they live in. They’ll call them little snot-nosed germ bags no matter the time of day and live for the day they can retire and never have to see a child again. Not me, however, I love my child. He’s a cherubic little 5 year old, with bright blonde hair and eyes blue like the ocean, named Steve. I must confess though, I was not expecting to be so enamored with him but I can remember the day it happened clearly.
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It was another night of lying underneath dirty clothes and toys that were supposed to be in the toybox, when I felt something poking me. I crawled from under the clothes and toys to see the tiny human creature staring at me. I was expecting him to be scared like many of the children of my coworkers, but he just stared. A few minutes passed with us just staring at each other, human meeting monster. Imagine my surprise when eventually he hugged me, just threw his chubby little arms around my neck. I thought he was going to squeeze the life out of me.
“I told Mommy and Daddy that there was a monster in my closet but they don’t believe me. Mr. Monster you’re not going to be mean to me are you? My name’s Steve.”
“Hello Steve, my name is Bucky.”
“Bucky? That’s a silly name for a monster. Will you be my friend?”
I didn’t want to tell him that I wasn’t here to be his friend. I was just something that every child has for parents to threaten a child with. You know, ‘You better clean up your toys or the monster in your closet will get you’, things like that. But I couldn’t, somehow just from his little human arms wrapped around me, it made me want to stick with him. It made me want to love him.
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I watched from the sliver in the closet door as Steve’s mom, Sarah tucked him into bed and began their nightly ritual of a story and a lullaby. I watched as he tried to tell his mom once again about Bucky, his friend, his monster in the closet, about how I like to play with him and read him stories once everyone else has gone to bed. I watched as his mom laughed softly and kissed him on his forehead before walking out of his room. As soon as Steve’s mother closed the bedroom door, he was out of bed and running to the closet to open it fully.
“Bucky did you see me try to tell tell Mommy about you again? She said there’s no such thing as a monster in the closet,” he said with disappointment.
“That’s because adults can’t see us, once adults become adults they stop believing in monsters under the bed or in the closet and they forget that they used to have one.”
“But Bucky I don’t want to forget you. You’re my bestest friend.”
He threw his arms around my neck, buried his head in my neck, and I could feel him start to tear up. I hated when he cried so I tried to stop it.
“Shhh, Stevie it’s alright I am never going to leave you, you and I will be best friends forever. I will never leave, okay. Now why don’t you dry those tears and get ready for story time. What about we do the girl in the red hood?”
“Ok, Little Red Riding Hood it is,” he confirmed, grabbing for a book with a little blonde girl in a red cape and a wolf hiding behind a tree on the cover. I started to read the book to him and as the story came to an end so did the little boy’s energy. He closed the book and yawned crawling under his warm blankets and I returned back to the closet and nestled under the boy’s dirty clothes.