Mr. Ballin

James was a pretty sheltered kid.

Like he wasn't being exposed to, you know, horrible plane crashes either in movies or TV shows or books.

I mean, he's a two-year-old.

It just made no sense that he was having this recurring nightmare.

But what made it even more kind of unsettling is that James wasn't just fixated on the plane crash aspect of this nightmare.

He also began to tell Bruce and his wife these weird details about the plane crash, because it was always the same plane crash in his nightmare.

He began telling his parents that the Japanese shot me down.

And Bruce and his wife are like, what is he referencing?

Like, is this a World War II reference?

But again, he's two.

Like, developmentally, it's not something he would say, even if he was exposed to it.

Like, it just didn't make any sense.

Now, over the past few months that this behavior had really ramped up, Bruce and his wife had taken James to the doctor to say, what's going on here?

Like, what's my kid doing?

I don't understand any of this.

And the doctors were all like, nah, he's a kid.

Like, yeah, it's a weird fixation he's got, but he'll grow out of it.

Like, don't worry about it.

But to Bruce and his wife, it just seemed like James was not growing out of it.

He was just getting more and more fixated as time went on.