'Bad Guys' are real, but they always lose, right?
Published: 7/20/2012 1:27 PM
Last Modified: 7/20/2012 6:03 PM
Maybe Doofenshmirtz puts a self-destruct button on all of his Inators as a symbol of evil's inevitable fate. Or maybe he's just goofy.
Courtesy photo/Disney
Somebody apparently had left a trail of damage through the neighborhood -- broken windows, slashed tires and overturned trash cans.
And whoever it was set fire to a neighbor’s garage and tried to steal a woman’s purse before the police finally caught up to him, just a few blocks from my house.
My wife, a former cops reporter who has never quite lost those instincts, went off to collect more information while I stayed on the sidewalk with our 3-year-old.
“Daddy, I need to tell you something,” he said. “Bad guys aren’t real.”
Wicked witches and ugly trolls. Dr. Doofenshmirtz and Captain Hook. The Big Bad Wolf. My son knew evil only as a plot device, a simple contrivance to let the Good Guys show how good they really are.
In storybooks and cartoons, being the Bad Guy is like playing against the Harlem Globe Trotters -- you’re there just to lose.
But no, my buddy. Bad guys are real. Very real.
They might show up at Best Buy.
They might be sitting next to you at the movies.
They might even come tearing through our own quiet, little neighborhood.
“I wish bad guys weren’t real,” I told my son. “But they are. And I wish you didn’t have to know that. But you do.”
Walking back, he asked if there was going to be a bad guy at our house, maybe in his room?
“No,” I told him. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
But could I be sure? Completely sure? It happens, doesn’t it?
“Daddy, I need to tell you something,” he said again. “Bad guys always lose.”
Yes, I suppose they always do, eventually.
Like one of Doofenshmirtz’s Inators, evil will self-destruct in the end. But “the end,” in this case, is an eschatological concept -- and that’s an awfully big word for pre-school.
So I told him, “Yes, bad guys always lose,” and left it at that, for now.
Written by
Michael Overall
Staff Writer
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