Pride Goeth

“Eamon has a really active imagination,” I used to enjoy telling people, probably a little smugly. I would then launch into dinosaur escapades and the crazy noises he makes and how he saves all his stuffed animals at least once a day from doom and destruction.

And let us not forget the Bobbin.

Ha ha, the Bobbin. Wasn’t that cute? Eamon really thought something called a Bobbin lived in our air conditioning ducts. Something that reminded him of his Daddy. Sweet, yeah?

Well, friends, it turns out that imagination cuts both ways. Because apparently, Bobbins have natural enemies called Dibbtz. You would not want to meet a Dibbtz. I certainly don’t. According to Eamon, they are terrifying.

Night before last, he decided that it was no longer safe to sleep in his own bed. In fact, it was so dangerous that he would rather VAULT OUT OF HIS CRIB rather than stay there by himself, possible broken limbs or necks be damned.

(No, we hadn’t changed him to a big boy bed before this. He’s a floppy but sound sleeper (usually) and we didn’t want to rock the boat. The crib was working until he decided a possible broken leg was worth escaping the Dibbtz. We, of course, disagreed with him on this point and now he has a toddler bed).

The child who flops around in his sleep like a dying fish crawled into my bed and curled up into the tightest of little balls, grabbing my arms and positioning them around his little body. If I tried to turn over or remove my stiffening arm, he would suddenly awaken and yell, “NO! Arm! Need help, Mimi! ARM!”

When I attempted to convince him to sleep in his own bed by sleeping on the floor next to him, he almost fell asleep, but just before he drifted off, suddenly sat bolt upright.

“Ssss!” he shushed. “What dat? Mimi? What dat?”

I listened. There was no noise. “I don’t hear anything, Eamon. What do YOU think it is?”

“Dibbtz,” he whimpered, and would not be calmed down. He crawled out of his bed, preferring to sleep on the floor next to me than sleep by himself in a comfy bed.

Finally, in the deep of night, as he fought sleep with all his might, I asked him, “Eamon, what IS the Dibbtz?”

He looked around furtively, and then whispered, “Alligator.”

During the day, he is somewhat braver. He will ask for a flashlight, and go over to the vent and ask for it to be opened. “DIBBTZ! Come out!” he will yell in his most authoritative two year old voice. But of course the Dibbtz never appears.

And now I had better figure out how to vanquish an imaginary alligator that lives in the air ducts.

In the meantime, each day I lean over my desk, heavy eyelids drooping dangerously low, more and more exhausted. When people ask what’s wrong, now I just mutter, “Eamon has a really active imagination.”