Just an Update
We’re going to stay in Texas. It’s just frustrating trying to find a house when the search is purely online, at least it is for me. I know other military spouses are experts at purchasing a house before they even relocate to their new base, but the idea of buying a house sight unseen scares me. It’s also very important to us to be in a good school district, and with the help of a local friend, I’m already finding houses in the best districts here. We also want resources and opportunities for military retirees and veterans, something Texas actually excels at; we’ll probably end up living in a neighborhood full of military families, which would be great for us. I know I’m giving up on living near my mom, but she says she'd feel better knowing her grandson is definitely in a good neighborhood and school district (besides, she never did get around to helping me in the Florida house hunt from her end). I also know I’m volunteering to continue surrounding myself with Bible-thumping, Trump-supporting pro-lifers, but fuck it, Texas needs more liberals, anyway.
***
I was not a good parent this weekend. Worse, I was a hypocritical one.
When the first Sin City was in theatres, I saw a woman in the audience with her three young children. How brave, I thought, that this mother has decided her kids are mature enough to handle such a movie, and she is prepared to sit down and explain everything they didn’t understand later. She is not raising sheltered little ingénues, she wants her kids ready for this brutal world. I actually walked up to her after the movie and complimented her on her courage.
“Oh, no, I had no idea the movie would be like that!” she said, looking rather horrified that someone caught her exposing children to it.
I stood there dumbstruck as she walked away, because it honestly never occurred to me that I was witnessing laziness and stupidity, not courage. For fuck’s sake, it was an R-rated movie! All my life, ‘R’ has roughly translated to “Warning: sex and violence ahead. If you’re not ready for naked people and grisly deaths, don’t go see this.” Even without paying attention to the rating, the movie was called Sin City! What in the world did she think it was going to be about?! Do parents let their kids see ANYTHING these days?
That was in 2005. Twelve years later I have a son who’s as big a superhero fan as his parents. After sitting my son down for talks about the cursing he hears in the PG-13 Marvel movies, patting myself on the back for not letting him watch Deadpool, and basically luxuriating in my smugness, what did I do Saturday? I took my 10-year-old to see Logan, a movie where the very first word out of Logan’s mouth, the very first line of dialogue in the movie, was “Fuck,” and believe me, it was only the first of countless times the F-bomb was dropped.
But what really gets me is that I let my son sit there and watch over two hours of Logan basically disemboweling people with his claws, but only one scene made my hand instinctively fly up to cover my son's eyes, and it was when a young partygoer flashed her boobs. Even as my hand remained frozen in front of my son’s face, I reeled at the message I was sending, “You can see all the horrific ways a blade can be used to kill a person all the live long day, but TITTIES ARE BAD!” I apologized to him later, but what words could possibly overtake the message my hand sent? And I certainly couldn’t erase everything else he’d seen.
Later, I checked the rating on Logan, and sure enough, it’s an R-rated movie. And yes, I checked this AFTER taking my son to see it. All I could tell myself was that everyone has their moments where they’re an inexcusable dumbass, and this was one of mine. Still, I wish it hadn’t also led to me being a rather ignorant parent who instills sex negativity in her child.
***
I was not a good parent this weekend. Worse, I was a hypocritical one.
When the first Sin City was in theatres, I saw a woman in the audience with her three young children. How brave, I thought, that this mother has decided her kids are mature enough to handle such a movie, and she is prepared to sit down and explain everything they didn’t understand later. She is not raising sheltered little ingénues, she wants her kids ready for this brutal world. I actually walked up to her after the movie and complimented her on her courage.
“Oh, no, I had no idea the movie would be like that!” she said, looking rather horrified that someone caught her exposing children to it.
I stood there dumbstruck as she walked away, because it honestly never occurred to me that I was witnessing laziness and stupidity, not courage. For fuck’s sake, it was an R-rated movie! All my life, ‘R’ has roughly translated to “Warning: sex and violence ahead. If you’re not ready for naked people and grisly deaths, don’t go see this.” Even without paying attention to the rating, the movie was called Sin City! What in the world did she think it was going to be about?! Do parents let their kids see ANYTHING these days?
That was in 2005. Twelve years later I have a son who’s as big a superhero fan as his parents. After sitting my son down for talks about the cursing he hears in the PG-13 Marvel movies, patting myself on the back for not letting him watch Deadpool, and basically luxuriating in my smugness, what did I do Saturday? I took my 10-year-old to see Logan, a movie where the very first word out of Logan’s mouth, the very first line of dialogue in the movie, was “Fuck,” and believe me, it was only the first of countless times the F-bomb was dropped.
But what really gets me is that I let my son sit there and watch over two hours of Logan basically disemboweling people with his claws, but only one scene made my hand instinctively fly up to cover my son's eyes, and it was when a young partygoer flashed her boobs. Even as my hand remained frozen in front of my son’s face, I reeled at the message I was sending, “You can see all the horrific ways a blade can be used to kill a person all the live long day, but TITTIES ARE BAD!” I apologized to him later, but what words could possibly overtake the message my hand sent? And I certainly couldn’t erase everything else he’d seen.
Later, I checked the rating on Logan, and sure enough, it’s an R-rated movie. And yes, I checked this AFTER taking my son to see it. All I could tell myself was that everyone has their moments where they’re an inexcusable dumbass, and this was one of mine. Still, I wish it hadn’t also led to me being a rather ignorant parent who instills sex negativity in her child.