Bleeding Christ and the Dinosaur

My two-year old daughter, who has just learned to speak in proper words, came running to me one night, panting, “papa, come” she said and started pulling my arm. I was lying down on our sofa and watching a travel program on TV. “Papa, wake up” she insisted. (She used to say ‘wake up’ instead of ‘get up’). I tried to shoo her away as I was hooked on to the TV program. But the little girl kept tugging at my arm, persisting “come, come”. Irritated, I raised my voice and asked “what is it?”. But her importunate plea didn’t show any sign of stopping. So I decided to check out what she was so worried about after all.

She guided me to the main door which lay open, and pointed her finger at the adhesive sticker of crucified Jesus Christ which I had glued onto the front-side of our main door a day before.  “See, Jesus is bleeding”. Apparently she hadn’t seen the blood marks on Jesus before. She complained, “Dinosaur has bitten Jesus Christ”. 

Though I was pleasantly surprised at the way her thoughts are evolving, I was more interested to go back to the TV program. But my daughter wouldn’t let me go. She said “medicine”, meaning she want me to apply medicine to the bleeding parts of Jesus Christ in the sticker. I don’t know what fascination she has for medicines. Whenever she spots a cut or scratch on her body or anybody else’s, she would insist on applying medicine – which in her terms is usually some skin cream. 

I told her that Jesus would not need medicine and the wound would heel on its own, and tried to close the door. My daughter shrieked, and put one leg outside the door in her attempt to stop me from closing the door. She said “dinosaur will bite Jesus”, if I close the door. 

Once, when she had cried to take her out at night, I had told her that there is a dinosaur waiting in the darkness of the night and that would bite her if she goes out. Since the Jesus sticker is on the front-side of the door, when closed, Jesus will be on the outside of the door in the dark, and she imagined the dinosaur would attack him again. 

I wondered whether I should break my daughter’s belief and tell her that there aren’t any dinosaurs in this world. But I decided against, as this dinosaur could save me from taking her out on another night, especially when I’m stuck to football games, which I’m crazy about. 

I fetched a skin cream and carefully applied to the knees and hands of the crucified Jesus Christ. Then I got hold of a broom stick and stepped out into the dark, and waved the broom stick in the air to suggest that I was trying to chase the dinosaur away. 

My daughter was really happy about my efforts and she told my wife once we were back inside the house, “papa beat dinosaur, dinosaur ran away”. Though I was glad to be pedestaled as a hero in her mind, I thought, next time, I should tell her that I don’t need to protect Jesus Christ every time a dinosaur comes calling.