No Werewolves in the City

“Mom,” my son asks, “are we werewolves?”
“No,” I answer, “we’re not.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. We’d know by now.”He mulls this over for a bit, then wants to know: how does one become a werewolf?
“You have to be bitten,” I tell him.
“Will I?”
“Probably not. Werewolves don’t like to live in the city. They like to run in forests and stuff.”

At that, he seems both disappointed and relieved. Not once, however, does he ask that central question: “Do werewolves actually exist?”
Conversations like these are not rare. The line between what is real and what is imaginary is severely blurred at our house. We like it that way; the notion that there could be an entire world out there, full of magical unknowns seems somehow more comforting that scary. To be honest, considering what we see on the evening news from day to day, a little magic can’t hurt.

“Are you sure they don’t live in the city?”
“Have you ever seen a regular wolf running down West Center Road?”
“No.”
“Werewolves are less common than regular wolves. If you can’t see a regular wolf, you’re certainly not going to see a werewolf.”
“But werewolves turn into people.”
“Still.”

It’s all my fault, of course; I found it necessary to watch An American Werewolf in Paris while my son was awake. I figure if you’re four years old, and you refuse to stay in your bed at 11 pm, the consequences are yours.
Mendel isn’t willing to give up on a werewolf sighting; he spends the next few days buttering up his dad to take him to the Henry Doorly Zoo. Surely, he’ll see a werewolf there, he thinks. He comes home disappointed; they didn’t have one. He didn’t see any vampires either, or leprechauns, or unicorns. What a crappy zoo.

Oh well, at least he got to see a blue-tongued Skink. Which, surprisingly enough, is actually a real animal.

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