Readers — The Onion gets it. They always do:Â
EVERY PARENT’S WORST NIGHTMARE IS LOSING A CHILD TO GORCHUL, THE DARK SORCERER OF TIME
As a parent, worrying is second nature. You’re constantly afraid that something could go wrong. Your child could get sick, or get in an accident, or even just not fit in at school. Sure, there’s joy and pride and fulfillment, but there’s also an unavoidable stream of dread. And all of these worries of course pale in comparison to every parent’s worst nightmare: losing your child to Gorchul, the Dark Sorcerer of Time.
It’s a terrifying thought that crosses the mind of any parent from time to time. Because Gorchul is real, he’s out there, and you never know if it’s going to be your child who will one day be abducted in their sleep by the mad chrono-wizard and dragged screaming to the nether planes of time.
That’s the hardest thing about being a parent, really: the reality that, no matter how hard you work to keep your kid safe, in the back of your mind there’s always that nagging feeling that you don’t really have control over what happens to them after they leave for school. Or even when they’re at home, standing right in front of you, as Gorchul has been known to appear anywhere, tear a rift in the fabric of space-time, and pull a child down into his primordial lair of darkness and murk before your very eyes…
Read more here.
There goes another one. Sigh.
This is actually exactly what it sounds like to me when people justify their “never letting their kid out of their sight” because “times have changed” and “you never know what might happen” and “there’s more bad people than ever out there” and “if anything every happened to my kid, I could never live with myself” and “it only takes a moment, look what happened to that kid in Heronsville, Kentucky” and “other people can take risks if they want, but I’m just not going to take the chance with my own child.”
Like blah blah paranoid self-centred delusional crazy ridiculous blah blah blah.
I was just thinking about growing up in the 80s, and how when I was little, the big worry was kids running away. There were afterschool specials (remember those!?), news stories about the “warning signs”, public service stuff about how to locate your child if they ran away, & the horrible things that happen to runaways. That was a big scary thing for a brief moment. How very different it is that then people worried that kids would be able to leave and be able to put themselves in a dangerous situation. And now people worry that kids can’t take care of themselves.
I love The Onion . . . they make me cry (with laughter). yes, they get it. @ChicagoDad, sorry to say, but kids run away because they realize one thing: Their parents suck and/or their home life sucks. At least that’s why I ran away. If there was a good home, kids are like cats, they won’t stray.
Seems like someone thoroughly enjoyed herself making all that stuff up!
“…because Gorchul is all around us, at every moment, ready to […] slip into the empty husk of [your child’s] body and pose as a demonic imposter of your beloved son or daughter.”
I thought that was called ‘puberty’.
And what about Volde-, er, He Who Must Not Be Named. He wasn’t around when I was a kid.
@BL: As far as you know, that is… 😛
HWMNBN apparently restricted his malefaction to Britain. We Americans don’t know what secret messages the Presidents of the United States received from the portraits in their offices during our childhoods. THAT story has never been told.
And is this any less traumatising for a child or the adults involved, fictitious situation or not.