Halloween is one of the great holidays for kids; I think the extremist Christian objections to it are so ridiculous. I guess my children are permanently scarred from wearing terrible, bloody, disgusting costumes, from being read horror stories in the dark by their mother who had only a small flashlight and a great talent for scary voices, and from living in a home where skeletons, witches and ghouls are an essential component of the celebration. I have sold my children's creative and literary souls to the dark side. And they love it.
Speaking of which, we did make a parental error in judgment last night-seriously. Ammo and his friend-both cinema addicts- wanted to see the Devil's Advocate with Pacino and Keanu Reeves. It's an R movie. Usually I check R's for the type of R that it is and usually he sees them at home where I keep an eye on it, but we didn't bother this time-he's seen so many and violence seems to not affect him and he's almost 15-yadayada...so Dan and I went to see AirForce One-only for some reason it turned out to be Men in Black-and we signed for the boys to see Devil's Advocate-a first. We got out much earlier than they, so I snuck into theirs and saw the last half hour. It was terrible---full frontal nudity, a lot of sex, a lot of evil, PAcino looked great, but I was horrified at what my child was watching and would have dragged him out if I'd known where he was.
After the movie, we told him his R days were over. And he said that he agreed. He'd hated it, been made very uncomfortable, and was disturbed by the religious aspect of it. (I'm not sure what he meant yet-having not seen the whole thing-but Ammo can watch any kind of violence unless it's "real" --this he finds disturbing and I think maybe the idea of an evil presence that can affect one's life without one knowing was veryt threatening to him-just guessing) I can't believe I goofed so badly, can't undo it, and I really worry about how he's interpreting what he saw. We'll talk more today and I will apologize to him for falling down on the job. I sure feel bad though. So I'm confessing here. |
