Scardy. Scardy.

Those words in my title -"Scardy. Scardy." spoken by little Kurtis, in his pronunciation simply means "Scary. Scary." And boy, he has had the things he's been afraid of too over the past year, for sure.

Just when we think we have it pretty well in check, know which items will trip his trigger and set him off, crying -no sometimes screaming in his panic-stricken voice (which means it's loud, very, very loud) something else comes along that frightens him and we have to figure that item then into the mix when we go someplace.

Case in point: Tonight, we went to a benefit spaghetti dinner, organized as a senior class project by a young girl my daughter knows through her step-daughter. The beneficiary of this dinner though -now that person we know quite well, as it is the daughter of a couple who are among Mandy's bestest friends ever.

This would be the infamous couple -Jenn-Jenn and her husband, Nick-Nick -and their three children -all who are at the top of Maya (and Kurt's too) list of most favorite people they know. Their youngest daughter, Emily, was diagnosed a little over a year ago with Transverse Myelitis and I'm not even going to try to explain this illness here but suffice it to say it is a very serious condition to hit on a kid Emmy's age -or at any age for that matter.

Mandy, the kids and I went to this dinner. Maya actually was pretty well-behaved, which is always nice when that happens. Kurtis though -well he had a bit of a meltdown caused by something the people at the table in front of us had with them.

Prior to the wife (of the couple) sitting down, she had been roaming all around the cafeteria with a nice big fat movie camera perched on her shoulder. She was photographing (filming) everyone and everything, or so it seemed. Kurt, I think, saw her in action but had no reaction to her or the camera then.

Not until she put the video camera on the table with the lens pointed virtually directly at Kurtis and then, boy did the crap hit the fans with him! The poor kid was absolutely terrified! Crying, screaming, words all jumbled up so we couldn't make out what he was trying to say and for a good while, all we could make out was him saying the "Scardy, scardy" over and over again.

Finally, Mandy figured out that it was this video camera that was putting the fear of God into his poor little self so she got up, walked over to the man seated at the table and asked him if he would mind moving the camera to his right side and pointing it in another direction.

He did that and as soon as that camera was out of Kurt's sight, he calmed down right away!

I won't go so far as to say that he was as good as gold then but at least he did quit screaming and that's all that was ultimately important for us so we could have a semi-peaceful meal then!