So I tried to introduce three month old Caroline to the joys of “Peek a Boo.” I happened to be holding one of her small blankets, and I dangled it in front of her face, obscuring her view, and then pulled it away and said “Peek a Boo!”
The result? Smiles? Giggles? Cooing?
No. Stark terror.
Her eyes like saucers, her hands trembling, too horrified even to cry, it was clear she was thinking, “OH MY GOD?!? WHERE DID THE WORLD GO?!? HOLY CRAP!!!” I quickly tossed the blanket aside and held her for five minutes until she calmed down.
I think I’ll hold off on “Got your nose!” for a while. Like, until her high school prom.
Two more days until the announcement, by the way.
PAD
• 
What age are you saving the “pull my finger” bit for?
heh.
Bobby
Bobby Nash
Writer @ Large
I had this same thing happen with my 6-month old cousin.
They keep trying to tell me it’s also due to my having a full beard and being 6’6″, 260 lbs., but I think the kid just wasn’t ready for it.
Kids are amazing that way. At the local Renaissance Festival I play the Town Villain. Between the black wool cloak, black costume, swarthy appearance, and full-finger talon rings, I have frightened many a small child. But there is an equal number of young’uns that are fascinated by the shiny things on my fingers and that manage to show about as much fear as they would to a Muppet. Some kids are just more sensitive than others.
Peter,
I tried to do peek-a-boo with my baby daughter too early also, but the result was not terror. She simply stared at me with a kind of Jack Benny deadpan.
She’s just started doing and liking peek-a-boo and she’s nine months old.
She gave her mother some terror last night by uncorking a belch so loud and long that it sounded like it came from a fat frat guy who just won a bet by drinking a 12 pack all at once. The discrepancy between the loud noise and the cute little girl that it came from made me laugh so hard I couldn’t stop. By the time I stopped laughing, out came another one just as loud as the first. I laughed so hard that my daugher started laughing at me. As my wife looked on in horror, I stopped laughing long enough to say “Babies are the BEST!” My wife replied, “Well we know whose esophagus she inherited.”
-Greg
Ok what did I miss, WHAT ANNOUNCEMENT???????
Ok my bad, did not notice the post previous. Sorry!!! PAD on Avengers would be cool
How bout a hint, just a little one????
Well, if we’re gonna share stories of frightening the little ones…I once had a kid around the age of 8 or 9 keep staring at me in a mall. He stared and stared and stared. He was staring because of the wheelchair I use. As he kept rudely staring and his mother kept noticing and not saying anything, I finally did the only thing I could think of.
I rolled over to him and whispered “I stared too.If you keep staring you’ll end up in this chair like me”. To which the kid screamed and I was “escorted” out of the mall.
That frightened face still gives me the most pleasant dreams…
Col
Maybe the announcement is an all-new Supergirl # 1. Maybe DC came to their senses and decided to take advantage of the momentum the creative team has created with the title. 🙂
I remember playing peek-A-boo with my younger cousins, several years ago. It was always pretty funny. She were about almost a year old back then, I think, and now she’s like almost ten, back in ROC.
The Annoucement, I’m curious about it too. The Supergirl would be cool, but I think it would hardly be it since they have that new SUpergirl chick rouaming in the Superman books. But it would be cool.
Johny
I guess the seperating thumb trick is out of the question as well.
I thought peek-a-boo was supposed to be played by hiding the adult’s face from view, then showing it again, rather than doing it to the child. That’s how I’ve usually seen it done, anyway… don’t think I’ve ever seen it the other way around.
davidh
Thinking it over, I don’t think it can be any of the projects he’s mentioned so far, because why then, all the secrecy? He’s mentioned the new Apropos and New Frontier novels that were in the works, as well as the upcoming Fallen Angel and TMNT series, so I don’t see why he wouldn’t just come out and say it.
My feeling is, it HAS to be something he HASN’T already mentioned before. The only it makes any sense for it to be one of the aforementioned projects would be if there were some radical change or new development in them, one that would for some reason require him to wait a while before telling us.
Am I warm, Peter?
The announcement? Well, I can only hope. That Buffy has been renewed at PAD is going to be the primary writer.
Announcement? Ooh ooh! I know!
PAD is replacing Joe Quesada as editor in chief of Marvel!
😀
Oh, and by the way:
Malvito: Between the black wool cloak, black costume, swarthy appearance, and full-finger talon rings, I have frightened many a small child.
Dude, that sounds like it would scare me. (“Full-finger talon rings”? What the–?)
That would be terrifc if PAD could ascend the position of EIC for Marvel, wouldn’t it? Maybe someday, it’ll happen.
PAD wouldn’t take the job of EIC over at Marvel. I’ve already asked him about it, over on alt.fan.peter-david. http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z4DC128C3
PAD on the Avengers? That would be a very welcomed announcement. Oh, and I can see Genis joining the group and since the Tbolts are no longer Songbird could come on board also. And…and…
My daughter loves boo! she’s loved it since she was quite young (6 months i think), she would pull the blanket over her head, pull it back and smile. she now plays it with anything! her favorite is popping up from under the table or around walls. one day i’m sure she will learn that its actually Boo not Doo. then she is only 17 months.
Since we’re playing the guessing game, my prediction is either Supergirl is being renewed or Sir Apropos of Nothing is being made into a movie. I doubt it has anything to do with Marvel. Maybe his dramatic play has been optioned into a movie.
Sweeney Todd? Peek-a-boo scaring Caroline?
What kind of a Father are you? 🙂
Announcement Front: Your new project is… religious conversion.
You’re running for political office?
You’re actually writing a Spider-Book?
You’ve been Hired by Mutant Enemy to be a writer for Angel?
You’re actualy using my Chinpan Xi suggestion for the next Apropos?
in a perfect world, i would love to see the announcement be a TMNT-YJ crossover.
i know it won’t happen, but wouldn’t it be nice…?
Star Trek: New Frontier, the TV series, with Peter David as show runner. Hey, I can dream…
Whatever it is, it’s good to hear some good news. Looking forward to the big announcement.
Knight Life or Sir Apropos has been optioned into a movie?
Wow. I am really enjoying reading all the speculation about the announcement. I’m betting whatever the announcement really is can’t possibly beat the speculation at this point (though I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong!).
YJ couldn’t be resurrected, could it? Although the movie ideas would be so sweet. . .
Chris
>Dude, that sounds like it would scare me. (“Full-finger talon rings”? What the–?)
Favourites of the Goth set, usually, shiny metal contraptions that fit over the finger with one or two joints. Extends from the end of the finger into a claw. They’re pretty.
A group I’m in runs an booth at a Halloween event at the local zoo. Over a couple of weeks in October (In Manitoba; it’s cold, but that’s a separate issue), this year we were the Dungeon of Lost Monsters. Dressed in costumes of Yeti, vampires, wolfman, etc, we were in a cage. Of course, some of the bars of the cage were flexible, so we could jump out at people.
Make a lot of people scream that way. ‘Course, then there’s the annoying brats who kept trying to get into the cage.
First post. Hey all
As to unintentionally scaring small children, I have one:
Back in the early 1980s I worked at a comic book shop in Yellow Spring, Ohio. A friend and I used to come up with one-panel cartoons for the magazine, Amazing Heroes, and we would put them up in the shop to judge the reaction of people who came in.
One was of Judge Dread standing over a pile of dead bullet-ridden Smurfs, saying “The LAW leaves no room for SMURFS!”
Well, that went up the weekend we left to do a convention. When we came back, it was down and behind the counter. Turns out that over the weekend a little boy saw the cartoon and started screaming and crying so much that the owner of the store had to hand over a bunch of comics to the kid in order to shut him up.
Never had another cartoon up in the store after that, come to think of it.
Then you have the other end of the spectrum…
When my daughter was about one and a half, she happened into the room while I was watching the “Hush” episode of BUFFY.
She took one look at the Gentlemen…
And laughed and laughed and laughed!
*I* thought they were creepy and frightening! *She* thought they were the funniest thing since whatever Elmo said that morning.
Yet she was afraid to sit on Santa’s lap…
Just thinking; wouldn’t ‘Got your nose!’ be terrifying for Michael Jackson’s kids?
http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=114