Jan 20 2009
Action Zero Dad
So, I’m sitting there with my thirteen-year-old daughter watching an action movie the other day. You know the type, right? The hero is chasing the bad guys, pulls himself out of a horrible car wreck, runs through traffic on the freeway, gets hit over the head with a chair, continues the chase into a warehouse, and then gets shot through the left shoulder inches from his heart. Cut to commercial. My daughter and I both look at other and say, “Uh oh, now he’s mad.”
That’s right, we both said it at the same time. Right then and there, it occurs to me to question the kind of father I’ve become. So I open my mouth to say something, and I’m suddenly channeling Will Smith. You know that trademark backpedaling thing he does where he tries to fix something stupid that he’s just said or done and ends up making it worse and worse until someone has to put their hand over his mouth to make him stop. Well, imagine a white guy doing a crappy Will Smith imitation, and you’ll be pretty close to how I actually sounded as I tried to “fix” the situation.
“Cause…uhm…you know…uhm…when they dropped the helicopter on him, that…uhm…it missed him…and the…uhm…building that exploded around him…uhm…just messed up his hair and…uhm…gave him that nasty cut on his forehead…but, when they shot him…that…uhm…uh… Look, you know that this stuff isn’t real, right? Cause that would actually be really bad stuff to happen to someone, and they wouldn’t be able to just–”
“Dad,” she says, interrupting me. “I’m thirteen, and we’re running out of commercials. Can we go get some snacks now?”
“Oh, yeah, right. We gotta hurry!” And thus ended my brief lapse of parental perception. We cheered the guy through the rest of the movie, watched things blow up, watched him single-handedly take out a small army of bad guys, watched as the authorities showed up too late to do anything, and generally went on about our lives.
Now, as much as I would love to delve into the deeper moral implications of all of this–NOT–my family will be back from the video store any minute with the sequel, and I promised to have a few snacks ready.
Lesson Learned:
Commercials aren’t as long as you think; go faster.
Participate & Share:
If you enjoy the content here, then please subscribe to my feed or subscribe by email if you prefer. It would also be great if you could leave a comment and even Stumble this article if you really like it. By the way, you can also get paid to blog here just like I do.
Great writing!!! Thanks for dropping!
@Insanity Kim: Well, I have realized that I can’t fly, though I’m not so certain that my head can’t explode. Oh, wait, you meant the kids? Got it.
@gagay: Thanks again, gagay.
@Nooter: Miley Cyrus in a parental situation??? Besides, I would have thought that you of all “people” would have suggested channeling Pongo.
@Justin: Don’t even get me started on cartoons and kid shows today. Saturday mornings used to be the only day of the week that kids ever got up early for on purpose. Now there’s nothing worth jumping up for.
@Aria’z Ink: Reminds me of my eight-year-old daughter trying to tell my wife that there was no cussing in a movie we had just watched. “Really, mom, they only said the ’s-h’ word three times and the ‘d’ word twice. There was another word they used that I had to ask dad about, but he said that it meant girl dog, so I guess that one wasn’t bad even though the guy was really mad when he said it.” You can guess how well that conversation went afterward.
@Toni: Hey, Toni, thanks for the nice comment. It’s great to get new people here.
@michellem: Wow, thanks, michellem.
@ettarose: Thanks, ettarose. I do have my moments.
@Stacy: Ahhh, now I begin to understand. Just kidding. That sounds truly bizarre. My step dad used to do that with the old “agony of defeat” guy. He’d play it over and over, laughing his head off like he’d never seen it before and show it to every person who walked through the door. That’s when I discovered the true power of magnets. “Really, it doesn’t work anymore? Maybe you played it too much.” Don’t give me that look. It was the truth. The 8-tracks soon followed.
You make being a parent sound like such fun. great post
@gagay: Thanks for the heads up on the eclipse, but, unfortunately, I missed it. That’s what I get for not even looking here for over a week.
@cmaher: It is fun. It’s also hard, painful, sad, happy, uplifting, disheartening, joyous, grievous, outrageous, ridiculous, tiring, and just about anything else you can name. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
@Jen: Well, I haven’t crossed the line into showing my kids R-rated movies, but I guess it depends on their age. I try to avoid them myself. It gets harder every year, since every good movie I see advertised anymore ends up with that rating. I haven’t seen Fargo, though I keep hearing a lot of good stuff about it.
@Thomas: That’s too funny. I find it far too easy to picture that happening to me. My thirteen-year-old, however, is beyond acting these things out. On the other hand, although I know that “Doctor Who” isn’t in the same caliber of violent movies or television, my eight-year-old likes to point a plunger at her sister and chase her around yelling “Exterminate! Exterminate!” If we drive through town when all the big, rubber garbage cans are out on the streets to be emptied, she starts yelling about Dalek invasions. This is what happens when children are raised by a geek dad who loves science fiction.