During Halloween, I bore witness to so many parents making their children into “zombies” with a Photoshop-type program. Throughout December, I’ve seen even more make their families into elves with the excruciatingly annoying “elf-yourself” program. Whatever; I don’t really care what you do with your family photos, how lame you make yourself look, or what you call “fun.” Sure, it’s just a picture, but I’m just not into it.

Now, the zombie program—that one’s a bit more sinister to me. I remember looking at those bloody pictures and thinking, “I would never do that to my child.” It’s not like I hold myself or my kid in higher esteem than you or your kid; it’s just that I think it’s every parent’s worst nightmare to imagine their child dead, which is essentially what this program allows, and why would anyone want to visualize that?

Cue in random acquaintance who decides to do it for me. He sends me a photo of my child “zombie-fied” and thinks he’s so clever. As a father, I’d expect him to understand why I don’t like this, but apparently I’m expecting too much.

Maybe it’s because my child has been near death so many times—from infancy as a premature baby, to every day in the nursery intensive care unit, to all of the dangers she faced, to the time she contracted RSV when our insurance refused to let us get the preventative inoculations against it… Yeah, death isn’t so damn funny when you’ve stood at its door, child in arms, and whispered, “I’ll do anything. Do it to me instead. Whatever it takes, just don’t take her.”

So don’t zombie-tize my kid. In fact, don’t elf-a-tize, robot-i-tize, or even yoda-tize (which might be cute, I must admit) her because she’s my kid. Would you like it if I took random pictures of your child and Photoshopped them into something stupid, annoying, or something you didn’t agree with? At least ask for bloody permission first.

And I know that people are thinking, “Then don’t post pictures of your child!” But who’s going to stop doing that, for one—and secondly, if I can’t trust you to leave them alone, why would I friend you in the first place?

And if you really have nothing better to do than to Photoshop pictures of my child, the child of someone you’ve met less than ten times in your life, then maybe you should get a job or something. Just saying.