Gore (Not Al)

The other day I was watching Kid A in the Big House. A while ago, while Chinua and I were on vacation, a major overhaul was done on this house, which is the community space, and some very motivated people got rid of all the ugly couches that have been passed down to us over the years (and believe me, these were some UGLY couches) and the ugly nasty carpet that had been stained and burned over the years (and believe me, it was REALLY stained, ugly and burned. One of the people who had lived here had even burned his name, MIKE, into the carpet with a poker. Why? These are the sort of mysteries that plague our lives.) and redid the main room. They painted the floorboards, and in place of the couches, they laid mattresses around the perimeter of the room, covering them with high thread-count sheets and delightful body pillows. We have LOTS of delightful body pillows. What they didn't know was that in addition to being great seating/lounge space, these mattresses would provide a much-needed function here at the Land.

Kid Bounce Space. Every single day (and believe me, I MEAN every. single. day.) the kids take off their shoes and bounce bounce bounce on the mattresses. You might not believe it of me (No, not you, you think) but I can be a bit annoyed about things like pushing the mattresses which are our seating back together, or rearranging the cushions. This is why I have no throw pillows in my home. I cannot bear the strain of putting them back in their places. And because I've never bought any. Okay, there are two reasons that there are no throw pillows in my home. Anyways, I was a bit annoyed with this whole jumping thing until I shook myself by the shoulders, which is not so easy to do, and realized, HEY.  KID BOUNCE TIME. We need Kid Bounce Time.  And we don't even need to have any bulky equipment, just these innocent mattresses on the floor, doubling as nice seating and Kid Bouncers. The pillows make great log cabins, too, because there are just so many of them. And wouldn't you like to jump into a big huge pile of delightful pillows that are just as big as you? I would. And then I would like them to turn out to be chocolate, so that I could eat them.

So, I was watching Kid A, and he was playing out some scene over and over. Running over to one side of the room, then turning and running and jumping on the mattress, dropping his sword and falling down dead. He did it, maybe... sixty-eight times. Finally I asked him what he was doing. "An Orc is shooting me in the back with an arrow," he replied. Ohhhhhh. I don't know why I didn't think of that.

This is my son who cried his way through the entire movie, "Curious George," because the monkey was sad.

This is my son who cannot stand most Disney movies because he is shaking and crying by the time whatever disaster befalls a parent/brother/close friend of the main character happens at the beginning of the movie.

I talked about empathy a little bit a couple of posts ago, and the truth is that Kid A has always been really, really empathetic. It is what makes him unable to get through a movie with a plot, because the plot usually involves someone being hurt or alone. But I'm realizing that he really is like other little boys in that he doesn't automatically equate getting shot with arrows or cut with a sword with physical pain.  Thus, the gore.

There is a family who lives here now with two little boys, one Kid A's age and one a couple of years older, and I think that this has to do with his recent steps towards manly sword fights and battles. I often come out of my house to find myself under mild attack. Either that or they scurry back toward their "castle", which is a clump of three very tall and thick Douglas Fir trees stuck together at the base with a space in the middle big enough for three or four tiny warriors. Then I find myself looking down a bow shaft. The arrow does have a sucker on the end of it, so I don't feel too threatened.

I love the fact that Kid A has other little boys to play with, and I especially love that their castle is made of trees, and I also laugh at the fact that Kid A is busy getting shot in the back (sixty-eight times) and having swords run through him.  However, I totally can't relate. My son is, well, a son.  I'm a girl.  A woman.  I'm the one who doesn't like the fight scenes, who yawns her way through the fight scenes, either that or flinches and leaves the room. I love the movie Hero (Chinua is big on Kung Fu) because of the colors, the flying, the breathtaking art of the movie, not the fight scenes.

So it's a bit mysterious to me, this gore, the dying over and over. I'll just watch from a little ways back.