Scary things

Jamie is a very brave little boy. He used to be so timid, but now he just dives headlong into new situations. It's quite inspiring. We are always asking him if TV shows or movies scare him and he just laughs at us. The key for him seems to be a very clear sense of real and imaginary. The only things, in fact, that seem to upset him are historical events. He's been very into the Magic Tree House books lately. These are great for him and he absolutely loves them, but at times they can get a little intense. The Titanic one, for instance, gets pretty graphic about the situation at sea and Jamie needed to take this very slowly. As is his wont, he memorized a number of salient details, as you'll see below.

Generally, Jamie reacts in a reassuring way to these things, talking about how he would run away, or get on a lifeboat or something sensible like that. One night after we read a bit and the boys headed off to bed, Connor started talking about the same thing, saying that if he were on the Titanic, he would stay on the life boat. Jamie, with his great older brother knowledge, then said, ever a little impatiently, "Connoooo. The life-boats are used to get AWAY from the boat. And I hate to tell you this but there were only 20 lifeboats and they needed 40 to get everybody off the boat. It's very sad..." Here the voice cracks a little and the pedantic tone shifts to uncertainty. "It's making me really sad, right now. Now...I'm...crying..." And indeed he was. Poor little fellow, when he knows things are real, he feels them acutely. Connor, meanwhile, had already moved on.