Kids at the Movies: ALVIN!

There are so many great psychological stories I'd love to tell about litle kids.

And now that we have a few more of them in the family (grandchildren that I can subvert and hypnotize at will, little people who seem to enjoy the whole procedure, one that involves exhausting me to tears) it's easier to see the light side and to take the time to actually write the whole business down.

We got smarter phones a few months ago, and I get text messages a few times a day (if you have enough kids you can do this, it's a perk), some with pics.

At a wedding the other night I got this text message:

Took munchkin to the movies. A disaster.

Well, what did he expect? She's not even two.

Left the party early, came home to putter around and saw an email from him telling the whole story to the family. We do that, send the first degrees family email. Everyone uses the Reply All option so we can report on menus (it's important to know what people had for supper, all right?), review movies (I'll rarely go unless a film has been cleared by one of them), and talk about whether or not ANYONE saw Desperate. Here's what he wrote:

We just came back from a DGA (i.e. free) screening of Alvin and the Chipmunks. We figured it would be a good test run to see how the munchkin could handle a movie.

The film starts with the titular chipmunks high in a tree. They're singing and gathering nuts. Soon, a chainsaw is heard, the tree begins to shake, and then fall. At that point, a little girl SCREAMS at the top of her lungs, followed by "(my granddaughter's name) no want it!"

We stayed about five more minutes, and finally left when the munchkin told Rac she was scared. Ah well.

Rac added to the replies,

I believe the exact quote was "Chipmunk movie too scaaaaaarey."

I reminded everyone that when FD and I took our two oldest (one of whom is the munchkin's father) to a Sunday matinee as toddlers, a scream rang out in that theater, too, causing literal pandemonium.

THEY KILLED BAMBIE'S MOTHER!

I thought he'd never get over it.

Transgenerational, you would think, except it wasn't munchkin's dad who caught it. It was his twin brother, her uncle.

So the moral of the story. These flicks look innocuous, but that doesn't mean they are. Oh, that penguin movie's got some pretty scary scenes, too, btw.

therapydoc