Let's Go to the Movies!

Back when I was merely in charge of five younglings, the Two Towers came out.
Man we wanted to see that movie. However, we were in between babysitters.

Sheer numbers required that we use adults at that point, I mean, who in this day and age had five kids? Most sentient beings over the age of 18 however, wanted extraordinary funding in return for doing what I did for free daily. Those who agreed, we used until they wizened up. I don’t think my kids were that difficult. She really wanted to go back home to Nepal. That's what she said in the letter anyway. The next babysitter who had lived in the town home across from us, suddenly enrolled in the community college and got very very busy. Then her phone stopped working altogether.

Our third sitter opted for a slightly less dramatic exit; she got married and had her own kids before moving out of the country. Having no grandparents within less than a six hour drive, we were going to miss out on Peter Jackson's second installment until it came out on DVD. Then we hit upon what seemed to us, a brilliant idea.

The late show. We'd wait an excruciating four weeks, when the crowds had significantly ebbed, and then, with the youngest dressed in sweatpants that could double as pj's, we'd take them to the movies and they'd fall asleep while we watched. Genius. Pure Genius!

The day arrived and willingly, we forked over what would have been the equivalent of a baby sitter's fee in kids’ tickets, and even more for the obligatory popcorn.

We were savvy enough to make sure no one got caffeine. We were punting on the parent screening of suitable material with respect to imaginary monsters, violence, scope, but we weren't so stupid as to pump them up with sugary guaranteed keep up until two o'clock am juice.

The last showing for the Two Towers was at 10:10. All of our ducklings tended to drop off at 8:30. They wouldn't last past the previews we told ourselves. Those couples who had managed to get a date night out sans kids looked slightly askance in our direction. We smiled weakly back and hoped our kids would be snoring silently soon.

Delusional. If NFL color commentators were able to screen our actions, they'd have explained to the audience what a mistake it was to start this project so late in the evening. The better play would have been to go to the movie at 8:30 proper, so natural fatigue would set in and do the job. Telling the kids they were going to a show and then postponing it past bed time by a good hour and half, we had missed the open window between natural sleepiness and getting that third wind.

The kids were actually reasonably good, only getting scared when say, there were lots of orcs in the scenes. One climbed into my lap and covered her eyes. Another made good use of his Dad's arm. The other three sat immersed in the film, including one I would have preferred to have seen a bit scared. I caught the eye of a woman sitting with her husband; she gave me a tsking look that said, "You should have known..." I resisted the urge to offer her the opportunity to babysit.

Since then, we haven't tried that plan. In fact, we've only made it to a few movies since the trilogy ended. One of them was Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I remember it vividly because sitting next to me was a family including four small kids and I spent much of the whole movie mentally wondering what possessed this mother to bring her young children on a Friday night to see a PG-13 movie and at the same time forcing myself not to give the tsking look. The woman must have sensed my struggle as she stopped to mention, "My babysitter quit on me and moved to France."

Now that I have teenagers, it's possible for us to return to the movies with a clean conscience, but I get text messages from my oldest two. "M& P had a fight. No one was hurt. When r u coming home?"

Paying my son for eating pizza with his friends and watching his siblings who had already gone to bed felt vaguely like extortion but my husband viewed it as an investment. "We're guaranteed if we keep having him babysit, he'll leave home."

He might even go abroad.
"Hey honey, what's showing this weekend?"

Road Trip

In every family history since the beginning of time, there is a story about a well intentioned trip that had all the hallmarks of doom from the start.

The Washington Post in it’s well meaning ways creates Road Trips every weekend to places 3 hours or less away from DC, designed to give the traveler a slice of experience from the locale, highlighting the “Don’t miss whatever you do..” of the off beaten path. But there’s a catch to all of this. Sometimes, the non beaten path has been not travelled for a reason.

This voyage has been created as a precautionary tale against well meaning folks who might have otherwise entertained the notion of making a pilgrimage to Dover, Delaware for Saint Patrick’s Day festivities as suggested in this past Sunday’s Washington Post “The Source” section in future years.

First, let me make a caveat to those Delaware fans out there, we love going to the beaches there and bear no animosity whatsoever towards the “First State,” but I’d wager a Guinness, a freshly picked four leaf clover and all the winnings at Dover Downs Hotel and Casino, the locals could have come up with a better itinerary for catching the highlights of the 3.5 miles showcased of Dover, Delaware.

Getting there: I-95, straight line, 2 hours theoretically but then it’s only 20 miles to DC from my home and that takes an hour. By that type of math, anticipate 4hours with the obligatory gas/provisions stop and artery clog at the bridge.

Going there…this is a time when a DVD player would prove useful, as there isn’t so much as a single cow to point out to the children staring aimlessly out the window, or a corn field, or mountain, or windmill. There’s flat field after flat field of brown at this time of year, or possibly patchy greyish white. Ambient temperature, 40 plus a wind, slightly damp. Think Seattle spring without the chic possibility of flying salmon across a fish market, rural in an uninteresting and endless freeway kind of way. Even getting a competitive game of Alphabet going will take some doing if the powers that be rule out license plates as a source.

What to do: Well, here’s where things got interesting. The first stop on the day was the Johnson Vitrola Museum. “Get out of the car kids, it’s time to see the predecessors of the IPod.” The photo of the mostly brown room with the shiny giant Crumpet attached to the phonograph machine I am sure will bring joy and giggles to that budding spinster in your offspring. It lacks the kitchziness of the Museum of Yarn or the History of the Kazoo. The very air feels drowsy.

“Okay children, it’s time to really have some fun, so let’s head over to “The Green” at First State Heritage Park, for some four leaf clover hunting.”

“We drove three hours to go sit in a park?”

“Shut up and start searching. There’s a reward for the first finder of a four leaf!”

"What's the reward?"

"We get to get back in the warm dry car."
"I'm on it Mom!"
"Me too!"

The thing is, clovers have not quite yet come to full blossom necessarily by March 17th, at least not here. The rain and snow have managed to make the ground marsh like and cool –damp, like Ireland…so it’s an authentic hunt, not that the Irish ever hunt four leaf clovers, that’s just something Americans do…since the shamrock was actually used to teach the Trinity and a four leaf cannot be used that way. We don't find any, but one child thinks he's found one, because another kid mercifully "doctored a three leaf to split one leaf," making four.

“Great trip…where to next?”

“Oh, well, since we came here Sunday, we missed the Schartz Center for the Art’s homage to traditional Irish music, but we can go by the center and stop in Forney’s Jeweler’s because nothing says “I’m Irish” like a porcelain pig with a shamrock painted on his rump. It’s decorative and oh so festive.

"Lovely. I can think of nothing better, except perhaps, for going to the Wiccan shop, Bell Book and Candle, after all, I can’t think of any way to celebrate a Saint’s feast day better than to revel in pagan roots by purchasing a few Celtic books and deity sculptures."

“Wow…what an engaging multi-cultural experience…what’s next?”

The Parade…finally, now we’re talking! School marching bands, homegrown beauty queens and 20 floats featuring mostly local boosters including the Confederate Irish.

The thing is, the whole town is marching and the whole sideline is filled people like us, who read and took seriously, the Washington Post, damp from clover hunting, sleepy from Vitriola watching and busy proselytizing our children to prevent them from becoming junior druids.

Now that we’ve really started to enjoy ourselves, we’ll go see the mechanized potato harvester at the Delaware Agricultural Museum. It’s a kid favorite to see how Irish’s favorite food is pulled from the ground….I can see the little wee bairns dancing jigs from here at the prospect of it all.
“I…need…a drink. “
“ Me too!”

Luckily for us, there’s the Irish Mike’s Olde Towne Pub…which for this day only, is overcrowded as the 2000 people who came to see the parade and participate in all the heart pounding fun seek libation to kill the sinking feeling they’ve just blown a Sunday…

"Hey! I bought a four leaf clover at the Wiccan shop, now we’re lucky so let’s go to the Dover International Speedway or the Dover Down’s Casino."

"Sure, as soon as the 3.5 mile strip that is closed for the day because of the Parade opens up. That should be around eight this evening. We have to hit the road by six."

In the meantime, we’re going to the local McDonald’s for a green shake. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Editor/Spouse: “Psst. Sherry! It’s May. Memorial Day Weekend is coming up. Why are you posting this?”

“This has been a cautionary tale as part of a public service announcement. Drive Carefully. Plan, even better. Thank you.”

Reading Lessons

"Why should I read these when better versions are availble on DVD?" It was hard to beat the logical issues raised by one so young. Saying "The books are richer." didn't satisfy the way a good musical number with singing crabs could.

With my first child, I read to him every day from the time he was two. I was obsessive about it and sure enough, my diligence bore fruit. He entered Kindergarten already a solid reader. By second grade, he was handling the third Harry Potter book when it first came out without my help.

My subsequent daughter took a little bit longer, but dove into big books as soon as she got the hang of things. My third child, always striving to ensure I didn’t mistake her for her older sister, held out on falling in love with reading until third grade. Then she discovered…if you’re reading, Mom doesn’t make you clean…and it became a favorite and preferred activity.

Three kids past third grade, three solid readers…a good track record.

But numbers have begun to wear down my endurance for returning to Green Eggs and Ham and Curious George. I have allowed the later children to delve into questionable reading material like Captain Underpants –in part because my son would read with his older brother –and I didn’t have to look at it.

For my fiver, she delighted in such fare as "Tinker bell finds Her Place," a story so sugary I considered the possibility of injecting insulin after the fifth reading. Plus, reading aloud, both my son and daughter like interrupting and that drives me nuts. They are not into the reading world yet, not in the transported way my older three are. The words haven't yet successfully cast a spell over their brains.


When I introduced Charlotte’s Web, my son wanted to know when we’d get to the part where the gosling danced with the pig. In the Gingerbread Man, my kids asked where Donkey and Shrek were. My daughter was thoroughly put out by the unhappy ending of Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid, and they were completely outraged by the way some authors had the audacity to rework the stories of Winnie the Pooh, Stuart Little, and even Harry Potter. My son, being a visual learner saw books as being so old fashioned. "I'll just wait until the movie version.”


I wanted my son and daughter to take to reading with a bit more enthusiasm than they do vegetables, or my husband does leftovers.


Being a good mom, I summoned my inner Sebastian…(Sung to “Under the Sea”)

“Inside a book…
Inside a book…
The story is better
A real Page turner
Just Take a Look!
Those Words Create a bigger scene
Of a Place You’ve Never Been!
And in Full Color
If You Take the Trouble
To Just Read a Book..”

Maybe I’d have fared better if we hadn’t been in the library, or if I had a backup band of singing bass and clams.

However, he did grudgingly put back the movie book version of the Pirates of the Caribbean Part III and agree to check out “The Trumpeter Swan.” (the assigned book for the next book report). And she checked out the original Peter Pan. "Tinker Bell is in this one too!" she told me in a knowing half secret. "The librarian told me!"

I picked out "The Rough Faced Girl," an American Indian version of Cinderella and a younger version of "The Once and Future King."

Eyeing me with suspicion, my son glared at my selection. "I bet it doesn't have any pictures."
Some day they’ll thank me I’m sure.


In the meantime, I’m going to work on my Swan and Dance number.



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