Are you for real?

My son Adam who is turning 5 in April this year is down with a very bad throat infection, coupled with high fever. Naturally, he has to take medicine to control the fever. Being sick and cranky, he is not the most cooperative patient at the moment. The mere mention of medicine will cause him to collapsed in a pool of tears and whinyness ( I know, no such word but you know what I mean!)

Anyway, last Saturday at 3am, he was burning up so I woke him up to give him paracetemol. He started wailing and protesting. Then he asked me a very strange question. Can I scratched your chin?

Huh? Scratched my chin? Well OK....if that makes you happy.

So he reached out and gave my chin a tickle and then said....OK, you are for real! You are not a mean person in disguise!

Then only it occurred to me what he was doing. He thought I was wearing a mask and was checking by scratching my chin to see whether there is indeed a mask!

Either I looked so frightening in the middle of the night or I was being so 'mean' to him that caused a overactive imaginative burning up boy to think that the lady lying next to him in his bedroom is a mean witch pretending to be his mummy!