On Thursday, Michael and I happened to be watching the news while he was finishing up breakfast.
On comes a commercial for an upcoming Oprah show.
It shows a video recording of a little boy storming around a house in a screaming rage, while Oprah’s voice intones ominously: “…seven years old, he tried to kill his OWN MOTHERRRRRRRRR….”
That’s all Michael needed to hear.
I had to spend the next hour or so inventing from whole cloth explanations as to why the little boy was angry, who he was, what happened to his mom, how he got better, what was wrong in his head, when it happened, and whether he’d some day show up on our doorstep screaming and wielding a knife.
Later that day, after school, I had to go through the explanations again. He brought it up to his mom, and I had to explain to her what the commercial was about, and how deeply those fifteen some odd seconds of airplay affected our son.
That night we prayed extra hard for happy thoughts and protection from evil.
Friday morning, Michael came into our room at 4:00 sniffling and weeping about a bad dream he had. He wasn’t tremendously coherent at that point, and we weren’t able to get out of him exactly what he’d dreamt about, but I knew it was likely born of what he’d seen and heard the day before.
He had a pretty good day Friday, but by the evening he was once again concerned about his mommy’s safety and about his own overwhelming emotions in general.
This morning, once again, he came into our room way too early, crying and snuffling about another bad dream, something concerning his mother and his classmates having to go away.
“I should ship Michael off to Oprah so she can soothe away his nightmares,” I said.
Anyone know her address?
Although I never watch her show, I did happen to see that episode yesterday and it was very disturbing. The upshot was the little kid had negative thoughts and his problem, as is Michael’s, is that he is way too sensitive. Michael’s paternal grandmother suffers from this as well. The little guy got the white light treatment plus medication and he is much much better, but it was a difficult show to watch. Have you done the thing with white light? It keeps you safe.
@Ann – I will cure you of being too sensitive when you are up here visiting!!! Heck I will save all our odd food just to make cookies out of. LOL!!
I am sure some day soon this will surface at school and we will have to explain the whole thing to everybody. Poor little man being so sensitive.
Poor little guy… My own son gets scared of people coming in and killing us and then wondering what would happen to him and his siblings…
I don’t know Oprah’s home address, but if you send Michael to me, I’ll drive him down to Harpo Studios for you! She’s still shooting episodes for the rest of the season!
Poor little guy. It is so hard to know what blurbs they will hear and which they won’t, let alone knowing before they come on and being able to head them off.
That is just awful! Shouldn’t they be required to have a warning, not suitable for young children blurb before it aired?
Just another reason to not like Oprah. Tell Michael she is going away and taking all the weirdos to her own little world far away.
Poor Michael. I can understand the title of this blog.