Tales from a Free-Range Childhood

by Donald Davis

  Finally, we got to the kitchen. It smelled so good in there. Mama had made fresh coffee and now was getting ready to make French toast for all of us. There was a loaf of homemade bread on the countertop, and a big and sharp butcher knife resting beside the bread. Mama picked up the knife, tested its sharpness with her thumb, and began to hack at the bread.

  Every one of us had bulging eyes and sweaty lips. “Will you please put that knife away?” It was David who was speaking. “Please . . . now!” The other three of us were nodding and hoping that the knife would disappear. It looked menacing even as my own mama held it.

  “What in the world is the matter with you boys?” she smiled.

  “I will tell you what.” I was now the spokesman. “After that movie that you made us go see, that knife could kill any ten snakes that you have ever even dreamed of, that’s what!”

  In that moment, I realized that we had all learned about irrational fear. Like Mama said years before, “Irrational fear is always something that someone else has. If you are scared of something, it does not matter what it is, it makes more sense to you than anything in the whole world!”