We went to a restaurant last night, anxious to kick off our Thanksgiving detox diet with some Italian pizza, calzones, and eggplant parmesan–but wouldn’t you know, almost immediately there was an unsolvable problem.

Yep, we got a scary hostess.

At least that’s what Charlie said, and he is three years old and an expert on Things That Are Too Scary. He keeps a mental catalog of these items, and so far they include dogs, monsters, the garage door opener, certain public restrooms, burned-out lights, remote-controlled cars, and the oven timer.

And lately he’s added old women who wear puffy hairdos from the 1960’s.

They make him too tense, you see. First he shrinks away and whimpers, and then you can just see how he has to keep them in his sight at all times–the way most of us have to do with Horrible Bugs or perhaps reptiles. If there’s one around, we need to know its exact longitude and latitude so we can plan our escape route, if it should become necessary.

When this particular hostess was walking us to our table, he hung back and kept insisting that we get somebody else. “I’m scared! I need her to go away!” he said. “Bring somebody else to the table! I need another person!”

We couldn’t tell if the hostess heard him or not. Luckily the place was very loud. So we just kept telling him it was okay, that she was very nice–even though though that kind of logic has never helped with three-year-olds in the history of the world. They know that the world is an unpredictable place, with many more horrifying dangers than the rest of us are willing to admit to. He could only barely bring himself to get into the high chair she brought him, and then every time she would pass by, he would stop eating and just cower and glare. 

I had to agree with him that this hairdo was moderately disturbing, but only because when I was in the fourth grade almost everybody’s mother wore her hair like this, and slept with it wrapped up and mummified in toilet paper. You want to talk about the world’s horrors: try facing your own mother each morning and watching her release her hairdo from a half-roll of toilet paper and then repuffing her cotton-candy hairdo with a comb that resembled a medieval weapon.

But I love the way a three-year-old will just flat-out refuse to back down on something as important as this. This morning he and I were discussing the evening, the wonderful chicken pizza we ate, and then his face darkened.  “But that lady had bad, scary hair,” he said, as though that was all a person needed to say about it.

“But why were you scared?” I said. “That lady’s hair wouldn’t hurt you.”

“It’s just scary,” he said, and then a moment later: “Can I play with your ipod?”

Talk about your scary situations! “I don’t know, Charlie,” I said. “I’m kind of worried. Don’t you break ipods?”

He gave me a level look. “Sometimes I do,” he said. “But it’s okay.”