The number of imaginary creatures visiting American homes has doubled. What are we going to do about it?
It's time for a long-overdue national conversation
St. Patrick’s Day is coming, and for many Americans that means day-drinking, consuming oversized corned beef sandwiches and engaging in bouts of fisticuffs with strangers and well-wishers outside P.J. McShenanigan’s Malarkey Ale House. Sadly, though, and tragically, even, this beloved holiday is not all drunken rowdiness and solemnly vowing to eat cabbage more once a year. For many parents, St. Patrick’s Day takes on another dimension.
I’m talking, of course, about The Leprechaun, that ancient Irish mischief-maker who now comes to your house WHICH WAS SO NOT A THING when I was a child but is now a thing.
According to our kids, who are experts on the matter, The Leprechaun visits your house on the night before St. Patrick’s Day for reasons that are not entirely clear. As kids, their job is to trap The Leprechaun and take his gold, because when someone does a B&E on an American, the correct response is to hit back with multiple felonies.
Here are two traps our kids have built.
Shockingly, their attempts to catch The Leprechaun have been unsuccessful.
At our house, the leprechaun leaves a note, along with fake gold coins and candy. This is the part where you expect me to say this is a fun tradition, providing memories that will last a lifetime, but dear reader I WILL NOT because our little pal The Leprechaun is one of the six – yes we’re up to a cool half-dozen – mythical creatures that visits our house.
A few weeks ago, I took note and posted on Substack after Cupid — the naked baby angel who wields a projectile weapon system — paid a visit to our house:
The number of mythical creatures who cross the transom from Imaginationland into American homes has doubled.
This is the real border crisis.
I blame Elf on a Shelf. EOAS was the gateway creature. America was doing JUST FINE AND DANDY with the Tooth Fairy, Santa and the Easter Bunny for generations. Then Elf comes along, and it’s like – hey, if the nocturnal movement of a mischievous fairy is possible, why not toss in an impossibly tiny Irishman? Why not add a Roman god of desire, erotic love and attraction who ignores reasonable notions of consent? Door’s open, boys! Try not to aim at the head! Parents, meanwhile, spend days, sometimes weeks, in painstaking preparation for these magical visitors.
Have you seen the look on a mom’s face on Day 15 of Elf on a Shelf? Have you noticed the way a mom stares at Elf just a little too long while waving the steak knife around at dinner?
That elf isn’t going back to the North Pole.
He’s seen too much.
Yes, our children are being delighted with the belief that they live in a world of possibility and magic wonder where anything can happen if you believe it in your heart of hearts … but at what cost?
Here’s my biggest concern: Once we swing the door to enchanted lands wide open, we don't know what's going to cross over. Will we wake up one morning and find a Thanksgiving Kraken in the bathtub? A 4th of July Medusa behind the hot water heater in the basement? An Arbor Day Cerberus eating and drinking from both the dog bowls?
I wish I had an answer for this. We can’t shut down the border as long as the Power of a Child’s Imagination leaves it open. We could try tariffs, which, I’ll be honest, I’m not exactly sure how tariffs are even supposed to work, because apparently you threaten tariffs and then say just kidding and then threaten tariffs again and then say just kidding again and then … profits?
This year, I’m building the trap.
No load-bearing towels.
This one’s for real.
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I think your hypothetical creatures skew too greek. You are also strikingly short on practical solutions. You could have at least devoted a paragraph to the pros and cons of exorcism. Other than that a thought provoking piece on an important, but undercovered crisis.
— the naked baby angel who wields a projectile weapon system —
Epic....