Our oldest son used to have lots of nightmares. I think he still has them, but for the most part he deals with them himself.

Earlier this year, we had a bizarre episode. The big guy woke us up in the middle of the night, banging through our bedroom door and running right to our bed.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything, just crawled into our bed.

“Nightmare?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Wanna talk?”

“It was a giant bacteria and everything it touched turned into a bacteria and we were shooting at it, but it wasn’t stopping.”

“Yikes,” I said. “Where did that come from?”

He closed his eyes and nestled into his momma. “The dentist movie.”

I found out the next day that they had watched a movie at school about the importance of brushing, complete with animated bacteria attacking the teeth.

He’d had a nightmare about a dental hygiene movie.

Note to self: keep son away from the evening news.