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Michele lives in the Northeast.
Her son has large, dark, knowing eyes. When I met him,
there was a glint of confidence
behind his perfectly believable mask of timidness, as he peeked out from behind a chair. Josh, is three years old.
He
is bright and precocious, but his language
skills are still not fully developed. Real words
mingle freely with babbling,
so it is often difficult to
interpret what he is trying to communicate. Sometimes, his references are still so vague,
unique to him, that you would have to know Josh well to decipher him.
But one day, Josh's mother felt her heart race when
he clearly indicated that there was a being in his room, and that that being might not be altogether friendly . . .
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We live in a small apartment, nestled in a large old building.
My three year old son Josh has his own room, but, like
many children his age, usually refuses to sleep there at night, insisting instead that he sleeps in my bed with me.
One
afternoon last autumn, Josh was playing in his room, alone. I was in the living room, a few feet away.
Suddenly he
screamed, "Mama! Mama!"
I thought something was really wrong, and I went running to see what had happened.
I found him sitting on the floor in his room, visibly upset.
"What, Josh?" I asked, still slightly panicked.
"Guy Bold!" Josh cried.
Bold is Josh's way to describe someone's behavior when they're doing something
inappropriate; hurt his feelings, or prevent him from having his way. His demeanor led me to believe that he was extremely
upset. But there was no "Guy" in Josh's room. Nobody to be Bold.
"What guy?" I asked. I knew no
one was in the room, but I still wanted to make sense of what he was trying to say.
"Guy!" Josh repeated,
and he lifted a finger to point at an area up near the ceiling. "At Guy Bold!"
My heart started racing, as
my gaze followed the direction in which he pointed. I saw nothing, but Josh was so convinced that a 'guy' hovering near the
ceiling had been 'bold,' that I quickly removed him from his room. It was clear that Josh really believed someone was in his
room. That he could see the being. And that, somehow, either in words or actions, this being had upset Josh.
A week
or two later, Josh and I went to visit a relative of ours in the hospital when I noticed Josh carrying on a whispered conversation
with "someone" in the hallway. The thing is, Josh was kind of off by himself. As far as I could see, he was whispering
to no one. But still feeling creeped out about the last incident, I decided not to ask him exactly who he was talking to.
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