One of the fun things about being a parent is the opportunity to see the world, once again, through a child’s eyes.

We spend so much of our time as adults thinking about things in a certain way that it can be hard to change our brains around and understand how our kids are viewing those same activities.

This is why parents think that a picture with Santa Claus would be the cutest thing ever and most toddlers think that a picture with Santa Claus is the most horrifying thing that has ever happened to them. 

This is partly because, as adults, we understand things not just based on what they look like, but also on what we know about them.  So, for instance, when I go to the zoo I am very impressed that they have a rare Panda, flown in from China, on lease for a million dollars a year, but my two year old isn’t all that impressed by the small black and white shape hidden 100 yards away behind a tree.  What stokes his coals is the squirrel that dashes right in front of him, scampers up a tree and then runs around it in circles waving it’s bushy tail.

He doesn’t understand that squirrels are all over the place and eat too much of our birdseed and  are essentially rats with a better hair stylist.  To him, they are these active fun animals that are a lot more entertaining than that boring lion that just lies there all day thinking suicidal thoughts..

This also explains why my daughter thinks that Hannah Montana is totally beautiful and the greatest singer ever and I think she is overly dependent on a vocoder and looks a little horse faced.

Anyway, I tell you all this merely as a preface to the following story.

This weekend, we went to Bowie-Fest, which is the little town festival near us.  The kids had a blast.  There were pony rides and moon bounces, cotton candy and deep fried oreos.  We walked around and looked at all of the different booths for various local organizations and intentionally traipsed through the mud to avoid the line of churches that had put up booths at Prostelization Point. 

I got my cholesterol checked and discovered that I cook with too much butter (shocking!) but that my body fat ratio is in the “good zone.”

We watched a magician who let us know at least a dozen times that he had been sponsored by the good people at Bob’s Windows and Siding.  And the kids won prizes for shooting tin cans with a cork gun.  Asher also shot a kid in the back, but I feel like that was more the fault of whatever idiot set up the shooting range in front of the balloon dart event.

Someone hasn’t taken their NRA sponsored gun safety class.

But the highlight was clearly the face paint lady.  She is probably the premiere purveyor of full face painting in under two minutes.  Her creations are impressive, but it’s the fact that she can accomplish them in such a short time period that really sets her apart.  Because I don’t care how good you are, if you can only get through 4 kids an hour, nobody cares.

She is the Bob Ross of face painting.

Anyway, the kids were excited about the face painting so we all stood in line.  Audra wanted to look like a dog, because, for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, she likes to pretend she’s a dog, occasionally even having her brother tie a string around her waist and lead her around the house.

Well, the face paint lady did a lovely job.  She used greens and oranges to paint a charming puppy on Audra’s face, but I think Audra thought it was too abstract.  She was expecting a brown realistic puppy and was a little disappointed in this more whimsical approach, but she got used to it.   I was surprised that being a whimsical dog was not as cool as being a regular brown mutt, but what do I know.

However, it was Asher who suffered the most surprise.  Asher decided he wanted to look like Spiderman and the face paint lady did a fantastic Spiderman.  From forehead to chin, he was decked out with red and white with black webbing, he even had a little jewel in his forehead because….. well…. hard to say, but it was pretty cool.

Again, the amazing thing is that she was able to accomplish this in under two minutes flat.

Well, when she was all done, Asher hopped down and went over to look at himself in the mirror. 

He seemed a little freaked out.

I asked him to smile so I could get a picture of him and this is what I got:

Asher was quiet and sort of sullen for the next hour or so.  He didn’t raise his hand to volunteer for any of the tricks at the Bob’s Windows and Sidings Magic Show!  And he didn’t really seem interested in anything else we were doing at the festival.

Finally we pulled him aside and it came out that he was scared of himself.

He hadn’t expected to look like that in the mirror and he thought that he was going to look like Spiderman for the rest of his life – that this had been some kind of magical transformation that would forever cause him to scare himself silly whenever he looked in the mirror while brushing his teeth.

Sort of like Beauty and the Beast except in this version the prince gets changed into an alien Spiderman wearing a yellow wig. 

Can you imagine how horrifying that would be?  To think that you had willingly volunteered to have yourself disfigured and that now, because of an innocent mistake you would look like a super-freak for the rest of your life – forever frightening small children (including yourself?)

So, we hugged Asher close, (but not too close, I mean he was covered in red goo for heavens sake) and assured him that all of the paint would come off and that he would once again be Asher again.  This seemed to cheer him up some, but it wasn’t until we got him home and scrubbed him raw with a paper towel and soap that he really seemed ok.

Yes, seeing the world through the eyes of a child can be fun, but also challenging.

Now if I could only understand my daughter’s fascination with being a dog, then I’d really have something figured out.