Halloween soundtrack

On Tuesday, bellies full of soup on a rainy late afternoon, L. and I led Cleo into the local Party City, to show given her an idea of what Halloween is all about. She's read about it, of course - in one of Cleo's books, Maisy throws a costume party; in another Curious George causes a ruckus when he mistakenly dresses like a ghost. And, in fact, Cleo's already been in full costume, twice, due to the generosity and handicraft of a certain Florida-based well-wisher. But, still: she's two now, and two-year-olds tend to want direct, concrete things before them, rather than memories or sketches.

So, Cleo, meet aisles 7 and 8. We spent more than half an hour trying on silly masks and plastic props. L., for a few minutes, was a Venetian carnival-goer; moments later, she was Papa Smurf. And soon Cleo was in the spirit, as well; in fact, she doubled down on the spirit, taking a large foam beer stein hat off of the shelf, and donning it at a rakish angle, to our delight. Even I, in an oh-so-serious water buffalo headdress, had to smile.

In that sense, then, Party City easily delivered. But it also surprised me, with a certain level of intensity for which I wasn't prepared, as a parent. Next to the entrance was a fully life-sized, animated Freddy Krueger in a cage; equipped with a motion sensor, he turned to face anyone who entered, and delivered gruesome bon mots (which justified, to an extent, his $250 price tag). Cleo was rapt. A moving man, in a cage? She wondered what was going on, even as I wondered how, exactly, to explain. I mean, it's a big leap from the polite bunny world of Ruby and Max to the blood-spattered realm of Nightmare on Elm Street, and I wasn't quite ready to make that jump.

But then we heard the music. As in the film upon which the installation was based, children began to chant a twisted version of One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. Perhaps, if you were a teen in the 1980s, you'll remember:

One, two, Freddy's coming for you.

Three, four, better lock your door.

And so on. I could just see Cleo, who rolls through the alphabet song a few times a day, and who's got her numbers down pat, perking her ears. And so we whisked her away, to an aisle stocked with bright knick-knacks, before she heard the final verse (Nine, ten, never sleep again). A few minutes, later, though, I began to wonder: why are children's songs so darned scary? A week earlier, I'd shown my freshmen the first shot of Halloween, which is preceded by a ditty chanted by a choir of children: Black cats and goblins and broomsticks and ghosts... And, too, a few days before that, I'd been remembering Omar's whistled refrain in The Wire: while on the hunt on the streets of Baltimore, he'd often issue a bedeviling version of The Farmer in the Dell.

So, readers, I'll ask you: why the conjunction between children's songs and terror? Is it a simple inversion of our associations of the tunes with innocence? Do the songs recall, on some level, the intense nighttime fears that we felt at that age?

You have until October 31 to answer.