horror guys

One of our fourth graders is a little horror guy. I understand him, because I am also a little horror guy (first book I remember reading was Monster Blood by RL Stine, my bible as an upper elementary student was Encyclopedia Horrifica, started in on Stephen King at twelve), but some teachers understand him less. They're concerned about this. 

I teach grammar to all of the third, fourth, and fifth graders. Fourth grade recently did adjectives and, of course, they had a page where they could go crazy and add adjectives to nouns and this is what he came up with: 

• killer bee
• robber store
• demon dog
• bloody shoes

I'm wandering around, as I do, and this kid normally needs a lot of attention, so I'm stopping by frequently, and as I'm walking past, he looks up at me and goes, "Can I actually write these?"

And so I thought about it. And I thought about his homeroom teacher. And I thought about having to deal with the possibility of discussing all that shit when, really, is there anything wrong with killer bee? No. Is robber store maybe like, a little sketchy in terms of 'does not actually exist, is not technically an adjective', but like... that's... I'm just saying, from a kid who was Pennywise and told me to be sure that I watch IT (reader, see the above Stephen King stuff, of course I've seen IT), 'bloody shoes' is like... yeah, okay. 

So I patted him on the head and said something along the lines of, "I don't think there's anything wrong with what you put, but some people might be concerned about it." And he changed it. Typical stuff like, you know, "yellow bee," "nice dog," "red shoes..."

There's nothing wrong with people who like horror. There really isn't. Sometimes you can tell that there are parents or adults who don't personally like horror and so they get so worked up over the fact that there's violence or killing and if something makes them uncomfortable then obviously the people who like it don't get uncomfortable and therefore are bad people. And I will say that there are some horror franchises, movies, books, et cetera, that don't make me uncomfortable and they're mostly fun. You know. Texas Chainsaw. Love me a Texas Chainsaw. 

But there's plenty of horror that does make me uncomfortable. And I still like that horror. Something making me uncomfortable is great. We love that, because if art makes us feel it is doing its job. So yeah. Next year, when I'm little horror guy's homeroom teacher, maybe he can express his little horror guy self a little better.

He will have to learn that robber is not an adjective, though.