The app was free. It seemed like innocent fun so we both downloaded it. Plants vs Zombies. Emma loved it as the zombies stumbled towards the house moaning, “Brains! Brains!” and the plants shot them down. She was even rooting for the zombies. “No, grandma, don’t stop them. Let them get in the house.”

Until the nightmare. She woke up crying and shaking. She begged us to take it off of the iphone and ipad. And never play it around her again. So we both hid it. Or so we thought. Unfortunately, she is a lot more computer savvy than I knew. She didn’t see the file folder it was hidden in but she double clicked on the ipad and there it was. I had forgotten to completely close it out. Busted! “Mommy, mommy, grandma still has that zombie game on her ipad!”

Of course, Mommy still had the app on her iphone but she only played when Emma was not there or asleep. Until the time she couldn’t shut it down fast enough and Emma caught her. Busted!

Then we heard about zombies all the time. Do zombies like singing? Can zombies go up stairs? Do zombies like cars? Eventually she ran out of questions but here is a partial list of zombie rules we now have:

1. Zombies do not like singing. They really do not like the alphabet song.
2. When children do not cooperate, zombies stare at them meanly but go away when they do cooperate.
3. Zombies do not like cars because they move too fast and run over them.
4. Zombies cannot climb stairs because they cannot lift their feet when they walk. They can only shuffle.
5. Zombies can only get in when the door is open. They cannot come through windows.
6. Zombies do not like smiling and laughing children.
7. Zombies do not get in hot tubs or bath tubs.
8. Zombies do not like vegetables. This was easy as the game is called plants vs zombies.
9. Zombies do not go into grocery stores. Too many vegetables.
10. Zombies do not like princesses. Or the the colors pink and purple.

Pop-pop’s answers were much simpler. “Zombies are not real.” This did not satisfy her. Fortunately, she is only three so she did not catch on to the fact that Mommy and Grandma’s answers were totally self serving.

It’s been a few weeks now and the zombie questions seem to have been forgotten. In fact, she requested that we begin playing the game again when she can watch. Not going to happen!