A diet of worms

After a visit to my parents' house this past weekend where we celebrated my nephew's 13th birthday, my stepmom told the story of my 3-year-old nephew's recent sojourn as THE GREAT WORM HUNTER. Evidently with great intensity, he dressed up in full-on safari gear and headed out to hunt the great North American Earthworm, which was absolutely fine until he accidentally FOUND one, which was not apparently on his plan. We had a good laugh over this very serious and resolute child freaking out entirely when he actually found his quarry.
And that would be a funny story all by itself. But it's even funnier in combination with Noah's encounter with a worm on Sunday.

We'd gone to the synagogue for Sunday school and the book fair, and Noah was enjoying a chance to run around the halls, particularly the long stretch of hall between the sanctuary and the rabbi's office. Now, nobody really expects to find an earthworm halfway down a carpeted hallway, but perhaps this one had a contribution to the tzedakah box, because he was well on his way down the hall when he and Noah crossed paths, and Noah stepped on him. Mr. Worm coiled up in indignation, while Noah levitated about 2 feet above him and screamed in abject horror, like he'd just seen the most terrifying thing that ever walked the face of the earth. Well, this seems to be the case -- and I carried a shrieking, horrified, full-body-tense child out of the hallway into the lobby to get away from the Terror-Worm. We found Daddy and requested that Daddy please remove the evil monster from the building to protect us, which he promptly did -- but then didn't come back in, but got waved in to take part in a blood drive, leaving Noah absolutely convinced that the Death-Worm had "gotten" Daddy.

After a few minutes, though, I distracted him and thought we were making good progress to a full worm recovery, but silly me -- I was experiencing a false sense of accomplishment. Because about every 20 minutes, Noah tensed up and began reliving the whole worm experience, telling me very seriously and shrill that "Mommy! A worm! I step onna WORM! STEP on him! He SKEERED me!" and then went into wailing again.

This lasted all day. At 10:00 last night, the last hurdle to going to bed, WELL after his normal bedtime, was a quick check around the bedroom to make sure ONE MORE TIME that there were no evil child-eating worms lurking in wait for him to go to sleep. And NO worms in the bed.

Worms. Who knew? Well at least I know that he's not going to go eat them if something doesn't go his way....