The Death of a Man-Eating Monster occurred 30 years ago when my wife and I took two of our grandsons on a family reunion. If you really must know why I am confident that it was thirty years ago, I took the eldest when he was eight and he is now thirty-eight. And, if you can’t figure it out, I was a bit younger myself. If you insist on documentation, I have none.
If you are curious as to where my family held this famous (infamous?) reunion, it was in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Now, don’t be upset, I am not going to bore you with all the Gatlinburg goings-on. I have something else to bore you with.
You see, it’s like this. On one fine day, we all visited the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. (A pretty nice place, if you didn’t already know.)
By the way, before I continue, if you have never been an eight-year-old boy, you just flat-out may not understand what I am about to tell you.
Anyway, Carolyn and I kept an eye on Jordan, age four. Reggie was another story. I mean, hills, woods, a creek. Heaven for a commando or Robin Hood or whoever he decided to be.
Well, I was standing on the other side of the creek from Reggie. The creek was about a dozen or so feet wide and not very deep. Then, I spied a Junior G-Man (or whatever) bounding from the woods. He had seen a monster in the creek which, no doubt, was going to have every park visitor for lunch. Reggie was wielding a Bowie knife, sometimes referred to as a stick about eight inches long, he pounced on the monster. I couldn’t stop the multiple stab wounds being inflicted on the monster. The reason I couldn’t stop it is because, if you didn’t know, an eight-year-old boy is a bit faster than a fifty-year-old man (at least this one).
So what happened next? I’ll tell you. I stood on the bank of that creek, staring at the remains of a monster, for almost an hour. When the man came to fetch his cool watermelon, I had to explain to him that it wasn’t vandalism. Have you ever tried to explain to a grown man that a watermelon is, in reality, a man-eating monster?
And that is how the Death of a Man-Eating Monster happened.
