No Fear

Okay, so I know that Cubby is my first baby and all, so it's not as if I have a wealth of experience to draw on here, but surely it's not normal that the child doesn't seem to get frightened. At least, he's not at all frightened of loud noises.

So far in his short life, he's been exposed to semi trucks, yelling sheep, barking dogs, chainsaws, shotguns, airplanes, violent thunderstorms, and God knows what else. I have never, ever seen him cry because of a loud noise. He gets startled, sure, and will jump when he hears a very loud, unexpected noise. But cry? No.

I mean, the other night? When he was already asleep? We had a seriously violent thunderstorm, complete with torrents of rain, gale-force winds, and frequent flashes of lightning. I went up to Cubby's bedroom, figuring he'd be freaked out and screaming his head off shortly. When I got up there, I found that his window fan--which I had turned on to high when I put him to bed because it was so sultry and gross before the rain--was adding to the chaos of the hurricane blowing directly into his window and his room was lit up every few minutes by the lightning. The lightning struck and the thunder boomed, but Cubby slept on.

For the last week, we've had an air compressor in the dining room, plugged in there to power the nail gun for roofing. Do you know how loud an air compressor is? Especially in an enclosed space? Even I don't like the thing. And yet yesterday, when Cubby and I were playing on the dining room table, the compressor kicked on three feet away from us. He started, stared fixedly at the source of the insanely loud noise until it shut off again, and then looked at me and smiled.

The child seriously feels no fear.

I laugh in the face of danger.

This can't bode well for his teenage years.