"Frock" the Combine

My son was playing in the basement on Saturday with some "new" Hot Wheels he had gotten from a garage sale earlier in the day.  He was racing them all down his little loop-dee-loop race track to see who would win.  I was upstairs in the kitchen enjoying my peace and quite and getting a few things done when I heard my son walking up the stairs.

Once in the kitchen he keeps mumbling something about "Frock the combine" and asking me to come get him from the basement and bring him upstairs.

"Frock the combine?", I ask him, a bit confused as to what he's talking about.

"Yea, frock the combine.  He's scary!", my son tells me in a perfectly serious voice.

"Oh, you mean Frank the Combine...", I said.

"Yea, frock the combine.", he says again.  Apparently he can't say Frank.

In case you are not familiar with Frank the Combine, he is the combine in the movie Cars that chases Lightning McQueen and Mater out of the farmer's field after Frank caught them "tractor tipping".  My son has a miniature Frank the Combine as well as a Lightning McQueen and Mater.  It was a set he received in his stocking for Christmas.  He was so excited to get it and I thought had enjoyed playing with it thus far.

I chuckled to myself.  "You're scared of Frank the combine?", I ask, not really sure what's so scary about him.

"Yea, he's scary!", my son says again.  "You need to come down and get him and bring him upstairs so I can't see him so then I won't be scared."

I follow him downstairs and then cleverly (or at least I thought it was) asked, "Well why don't you just hide him so you can't see him?"

To my surprise, he replied, "I did!  But I can still see his tires!".  I am often surprised by how clever and smart he is and his ability to try to reason things out or solve problems, but at this point I really shouldn't be.  It was pretty clever of him to think of hiding Frank to start out with, or at least I think so.

I looked around.  I couldn't see him anywhere.  "Where is he?", I asked.  My son pointed to the front of the treadmill.  He had hidden him between the treadmill and the wall, but if you looked really hard you could still see one of his tires.

I picked up Frank and said, "Mommy will hide him so that you can't see him at all.  Then you won't have to be scared anymore!"  I then hid him under some blankets.  "He's sleeping now."

My son smiled, intrigued by this idea and where I had hidden him.  But then he said, "No.  You have to take him upstairs.  I know he's there.  He's scary."

"Why do you think he's scary?", I asked him.

"Well because, he's mean!", he said.

"To Lightning McQueen and Mater?", I asked.



"Yea.", he said.

Then I thought I might be onto something.  "Well, he was only mean to Lightning McQueen and Mater because they were bad.  So as long as you behave and don't do anything you're not supposed to, Frank won't bother you.", I explained to him.

He seemed satisfied with this.  So I left Frank tucked under the blankets and went back up to the kitchen to finish what I had started.  But a few minutes later, my son came up the stairs again asking me to take Frank upstairs.  "He's not sleeping.", he explained to me.  "He's scary.  I can't be left alone with him.  You have to bring him upstairs."

I mean, I  know that most fears are irrational, but seriously.  I guess we have another one to add to his list:  heights, woodpeckers (because apparently the sound they make is scary), and Frank the combine.

Sincerely,
The-M-O-M