Scary Monsters

Zombies are back at my house. Not in a life-threatening, wear protective headgear to keep your brain safe kind of way, but as a topic of parental discussion. It is interesting to note that the walking dead have appeared on the playground at my school as well, as the X-Men and Transformers that used to chase one another around the yard are now, more often than not, flesh-eating corpses. Why then would I have any hesitation to allow my thirteen year old son to own a copy of "The Zombie Survival Guide?" The seven year olds at my school seem quite happy to act out their undead dramas on a daily basis. My son merely seeks a way to protect himself from such danger.
I am well aware of the fact that I think way too much about parenting. It does get a little confusing, when I play the argument that I want my kid to turn out better than I did next to the whining lament, "Hey, I turned out okay, didn't I?" It makes for some very annoying cognitive dissonance. After all, here is my chance to welcome my son into the world of creepy beasts and blood-sucking freaks. But the gore out there these days seems so much thicker than it did back in my day. My night of the living dead wasn't even in color. That was Bosco chocolate syrup all over that little girl's face, not blood.
In the meantime, while I fret and stew about how best to proceed, my son has taken it upon himself to make time on our stops at bookstores to pore over the book, committing sections to memory much the same way he does with favorite Garfield or Foxtrot cartoons. He begrudgingly respects the fact that his mother and I continue to monitor the purchase of his video games based on the rating stickers on the covers. The same kind of stickers that I scoffed at when Tipper Gore tried to keep me from listening to Frank Zappa. Back when I was a free-thinking college student. Now I'm a fussy buzz kill: somebody's parent.
I know it's just a line in the sand, really. There will be plenty of other concerns that will come along soon enough that will push this to the side. Some of them will be more serious. Some of them less. But at least I'm using my brain for something other than food.