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Scary movie 3.0
(by Tracy Beckerman - August 06, 2008)
There were many years when my children were little when we simply did not go to the movies. The movies I wanted to see were too scary for them and the movies they wanted to see were too mind-numbing for me. If I could barely tolerate Thomas the Tank Engine the TV show, I was pretty sure that two hours of talking choo-choos would make me cuckoo.
Fortunately, for a long time, my kids were content to watch their favorite flicks on video at home while I did something else. But one day someone let slip that all those movies they watched on TV actually started in the movie theaters, and then the jig was up. When the kids found out that popcorn and soda were part of the deal, I knew my days of surfing People magazine on the Internet while they watched Clifford’s Really Big Movie on our really little TV screen were numbered.
We decided to take the plunge with something benign and non-threatening. The Little Mermaid was in the theaters. It had happy, singing fish and happy, singing mermaids and it was rated G. We got my daughter a kids-sized popcorn, kids-sized soda and kids-sized candy – all of which were actually huge and had enough sugar to put her into a kids-sized coma. Then we plunked her down on one of those plastic movie theater booster seats and settled in. Even though we had done a last minute bathroom run, and then another last, last minute bathroom run for good measure, 10 minutes into the movie she announced she had to go. We went, missed some singing lobsters, and came back. Ten minutes later she had to go again.
“Maybe all the water in the movie is making her have to go,” I suggested to my husband as he got up to take her for trip number four.
“No, I think it’s the vat of soda she drank that’s making her have to go,” he replied.
Finally, when I thought we might actually make it through to the end, Ursula the sea witch-octopus-lady-thing became a giant, scary-sea-creature-thing and my daughter screamed and bolted out of the theater.
“It’s too scary for me,” she told me.
“It’s just pretend,” I assured her.
“Too scary. I’m not going back in there.”
I assured my daughter that Ursula would get it in the end, because they always do, but she wasn’t having it.
Unfortunately Disney typically has one scary scene in every movie, which meant, over the years, we stayed for approximately one-half of every movie we went to see. At one point I tried negotiating with the movie theater people that I should only pay half the ticket price because we would probably only stay for half the movie, but they didn’t buy it.
Eventually the kids got older and we progressed to PG movies and eventually we made it through an entire movie to the end.
Then one day my son came to me and told me he wanted me to take him to see a new movie that was out called Hellboy 2.
“No,” I said simply.
“But Mom, it’s PG-13.”
“No,” I said again.
“But I’m 13!” he protested.
“I saw the trailers,” I told him. “It’s too scary.”
“It’s not too scary for me,” he assured me.
“I know,” I said. “It’s too scary for me.”
To order Tracy Beckerman’s book, “Rebel without a Minivan,” go to www.rebelwithoutaminivan.com or Amazon.
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