run to your life

...is what J says when he's "scared".


The kids requested scary stories while on the River Trip. One of the Rules of the River is :No electronic entertainment allowed. You could argue the grownups break this rule by bringing cameras, but you'd be a bored kid desperate to latch on to any perceived loophole in which to wedge your foot, hoping you could parlay your dreamt-of successful argument into a video game and an ipod. The upshot of the Rule is a much greater sense of community (unless everyone's buried in a book) due to the games and such that take the place.

My brother and I obliged them. Scaring children is, after all, one of the chief joys of parenting. Anyone who tells you that kids don't like being scared was raised wrong. In order to really drive home the story, I like to include elements of what's around; whether current events, local history, or locale itself.

My brother (let's refer to him as Big Dummy) started off with the story of "Old Man Withers" who buried his money in his yard and brought it out to roll in under the light of the full moon. Meh. Then I told the story of the local miners who'd mysteriously disappeared, only to show up as skeletons, having been buried alive up to their necks in the river bottom by angry Nez Perce locals, when the river was dammed and the bottom showed. Then BD told one about a haunted coyote with eyes of gold who terrorized the local miners because of their unholy obsession with wealth. Then, to up the ante, I told this one:

Bitter Shape Shifter Bites Kids!


Not that long ago, in Eastern Oregon (we were very close, in Idaho on the Salmon River) there lived a bruja [Spanish for witch-this gives the story gritty realism, as "witch" is clearly make believe while "bruja"? well, it could happen...] who was terribly bitter about her grown children never bringing her grandchildren to visit. The fact that she'd been a terrible parent and was mean to kids was, uh, beside the point. She was upset. So, she decided to work a spell which would allow her to visit the kids. She transformed herself into a vampire bat and flew over to the village where her grandchildren lived, but she couldn't recognize them and had to spend all night in bat form looking. She began to get hungry...

(are you ok? you want me to continue? sure? well, because you look a little freaked out, is all. allright...)

She flew to all the windows in the village, and eventually grew madder and madder and hungrier and hungrier. Finally,she just let the vampire nature overtake her and she bit one kid on the ________!!!!! [insert exposed body part of child closest to you. optional grab of said part]
This was so bloody and terrible that she lost herself completely and bit several more kids' _____s!!! [ you know what to do] She was a bat all night, and barely made it back to her cave in the foothills [or some place near your house, if you're really mean] before dawn.
When the kids and parents of the village awoke the next morning and found the children had been gnawed on, they were really POed, and vowed to find out what had happened. They consulted their local shaman [pronounced "shay-man" cuz that's so irritating to my brother], who told them it was the work of a supernatural vampire bat, on account of how real vampire bats don't behave that way [do NOT underestimate your audiences knowledge of the animal kingdom]. The sha(y)man instructed the villagers to stay awake that night with torches and pitchforks in order to keep their children safe. So they did.

But, staying awake all night is very hard. One by one, the villagers dozed off. And sure enough, the bruja had come back that night to find some children to suck on. She didn't even only want to find her own grandkids anymore- she was totally crazy now. And she quietly flapped back and forth until she found some kid with his/her _____ sticking out[yes again], and she landed on that kid and bit the ____!!! Then she found another. And another.

When the kids and parents awoke the next morning, one or two houses had been burned down from dropped torches and one guy had a hole in his favorite chair from a dropped pitchfork. Also, 4 or 6 kids had been bitten by the mysterious, supernatural vampire bat. The parents had to once again spend the morning disinfecting the bites and putting bandages on the kids, while wondering what to do. Finally, the local sha(y)man decided he would use up the remains of his power doing the difficult spell to change himself into his spirit animal- the owl. [NOT the skunk.] He did this because he loved the children of the village, and wanted them to be safe. All day the sha(y)man worked on his difficult spell, sweating and singing, with feathers and stuff. By nightfall, he was ready.
That night, by the flickering light of many torches, the sha(y)man became a Great Horned Owl, and flew high above the village on wings so silent, not even bat sonar could locate him. Again the bruja quietly flapped into the village looking for children. She was very hard to see, and was very tricky- being an evil bruja, and all. But just as she was trying to open the first window, the sha(y)man plummeted from above and pinned her with his talons! Then he gobbled her up, because bats are pretty similar to mice, and owls can eat mice, no problem. And that was the end of that.
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J (3), N(11), and my niece,T(8) were all so gripped I had to let them off the hook. I told them that the sha(y)man had told the parents that as long as parents loved their kids and took care of them, he'd be able to keep the bruja in his belly and the kids would be just fine. They all started saying things like "Oh, okay, I'll be fine, then."

D(8) just looked at me and said,"Is that all?"
I think he was looking for some more blood and guts. Anyhow, that was the last story that night.