S’mores With A Side Of Creepy Stories

Last Saturday night, the Island Family decided to s’more it up. Since the area where we are staying right now is rather woodsy, it seemed like the right thing to do.

LCB tromped off into the surrounding vegetation to gather a compilation of “things that would burn.”

I tromped off to the kitchen to gather a compilation of “things that would turn into s’mores.”

We’re a rather primeval family, really.

Except for my eldest. Scared of what might happen if he was completely removed from technology, he tromped off to gather his PSP, just in case.

Okay, it’s time for a moment of truth here. 90 seconds before this picture, my son and daughter are going at it with each other, arguing and (I love this) making “mean” faces at each other. And then, all of a sudden they’re standing like this, like they’re on staff at Hallmark or something. Hmm, actually, it probably is giving them a foretaste of what marriage tends to be like. You should see the faces, fraught with meaning, that LCB and I can give each other. And don’t y’all who are married try to pretend you don’t do the same thing. Because if you don’t, well, that’s just highly disconcerting for the rest of us.

Once LCB got the fire going, the younger two started roasting their marshmallows. My son always has this internal drama going on when we do this, because part of him wants to draw out the roasting of the marshmallows as long as possible,

but another part of him wants that s’more in his mouth like yesterday. It’s great fun to watch.

My daughter, on the other hand, quickly gets mesmerized by the fire and will stand there, in a trance until you shake her out of it. The whole thing is a parental stand-at-attention experience.

My oldest likes his s’mores, as he describes them, without the marshmallows and sometimes without the graham crackers. Yup, you heard that correctly.

After the s’mores consumption concluded, we sat around the fire and told stories. The small people wanted to tell scary stories. I thought this wasn’t a good idea given that they were going to bed in a few minutes, but when I received looks fraught with meaning from the small people, I conceded. LCB, in what I feel was a decidedly unparental move, decided to oblige with a truly scary story, instead of concocting some story with a few half-seconds of scary stuff sandwiched in between large chunks of drama about unicorns and fairy dust. Half-a-minute into his truly scary story, their eyes went wide. For the life of me now, I can’t remember his story, but I sure remember the looks on all three of their faces. They, ladies and gentlemen, were hooked.

But, you could tell, they were also starting to get moderately scared. So when he finished, I tried to distract them by telling them a story about an affable young orphan named Erin who, over the course of 30 years or so, worked her way up from a life in Ohio as a factory worker who put buttons on purse handles to a life as a pilot with a cottage by the sea. Not recognizing the Faulkneresque epic storytelling greatness within their own family, they were only mildly interested.

So, not to be outdone by my decidedly left-brained husband, I told a brief scary story, complete with sound effects, which in this case were the scratching of my fingernails against the window. Scratch, scratch, tap, tap, scratch, scratch, scratch went my nails against the glass. Who knew I had a talent for making realistic creepy sounds? Not I, until Saturday night.

They were hooked again, but this time, a little more so. As we brought them up to bed a few minutes later, the three of them huddled together, and asked if they could all sleep in the same room that night. Then, they asked me to remove the window from the bedroom. Oh, and could LCB stand guard by the door all night, just in case?

Oops.

Sorry about that.