My son Stephen and I were watching TV when a commercial for a showing of the movie Gremlins came on. I was a little excited because I thought he might want to watch a movie that I remember liking when I was younger, but at the same time I thought it might be a little too intense for him. He is seven years old, and while he is really advanced for his age, Gremlins isn’t exactly the type of movie you show to a seven year old.
I was worried for nothing, because when he heard the rules for having a Mogwai, he was uninterested. ‘Don’t get them wet’ and ‘Keep them out of sunlight’ didn’t bother him, but ‘Don’t feed them after midnight’ killed any interest he may have had in the movie. He got this really odd look on his face like he was trying to figure out something that didn’t quite make sense. Finally, he just turned to me and said “Wait a minute, it’s always midnight somewhere, so you’re NEVER supposed to feed them? That’s stupid.”
I didn’t want to admit to him that little bit of logic never occurred to me until they pointed out the same thing in the second movie. I didn’t want him to think his old man was a dopey guy when he was a teenager. I also didn’t want to make up excuses for the creators of the movie.
I just shrugged, said “Good point.” and changed the channel. He went back to doing what he was doing and hasn’t thought about it since.