Like Father, Like Son

Ever since Empire Strikes Back I have been aware of the psychological damage that a father can do to his son, and have sought to minimize the damage that I do to mine.

Generally speaking, I spend a lot of time worrying what unintentional lessons he is learning from me—you know, those things that you never realize that you do until you see your kid do them?

Well today I learned that he apparently absorbed one lesson with particular clarity.

Background:

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about the problem of irresponsible parenting when we went to see Speed Racer.

The entire post is brilliant and I recommend it highly, but for the sake of our discussion today I will assume that you have already read it, and therefore will only quote part of it

(The post is addressed to two adult women I assume to be the mothers of the children we sat in front of.)

We arrived at the movie theater about 12:50 p.m. for a 12:45 p.m. movie. We didn’t worry too much about it, because we knew there would be previews. When we arrived, we quickly spotted some open seats in the middle of the theater. There were not a whole lot of other people in the theater, but those who were had sat in the same general area, because those are the best seats. Clearly you knew this, because you had sat there yourself.

It wasn’t until we were sitting down that I realized that we were seated in front of several children, but I didn’t think much about it. We could have gone down two rows closer, but that would have been too close. We could have gone two rows back, but that was further than we wanted to go. We sat in open seats at a public theater.

The problem started almost immediately. The children were chattering during the previews, not about the previews, just in general. I let this go, because they are just previews, but I was already concerned. I heard you say “Shut up!” to them at one point. They ignored you, and you dropped it.

They continued to talk during the opening credits. You said nothing.

They continued to talk during the opening scene of the movie. I turned around, put my finger to my lips and said “Shhh” to them. They shushed. I smiled and said “Thank you.”

A few minutes later, another one of them started kicking my son’s seat. One of you stopped him, which I heard and appreciated.

A few minutes later, he started again. You ignored it, or just didn’t realize it. I turned around and said, “Please stop kicking the seat.”

At this point I saw that he was stretched full out on the seat and stretching his legs as far as he could in order to reach the seats in front (this theater provides plenty of leg room). It would have been very hard not to see him. You turned to him and said “Quit it.”

Less than 5 minutes later, one of the other children, the one sitting furthest from you, started to kick the seat next to me, and the one next to her started kicking mine.

This marked the end of my patience. I turned around and said, in a calm but firm voice: “Stop kicking the seats.”

Her eyes grew wide and she pulled back her legs.

(The post goes on to talk about the parent who got defensive that I had corrected her children, and attempted—with absolutely no success—to shift the blame to us for having sat in front of her obnoxious children. But for our purposes today, the above quoted section is sufficient.)

Foreground:

Last week when I was in Indianapolis, The Wife took The Boy to see Wolverine. There were some kids sitting behind The Boy who were kicking his seat. The Wife told me tonight that he turned around and said:

“Please stop kicking the seat.”

That would be awesome enough, but she said he did it in the exact same tone that I had said it, which would be roughly translated as “I ain’t playing and I do not intend to have to repeat myself, and what you have heard is the last bit of polite conversation that I intend to offer.”

Which is pretty good for a not-quite-7 year-old who probably weighs 50 pounds soaking wet if wrapped in a heavy towel.

She said they didn’t make another peep for the entire movie.

(Coda: at the end of the movie, they started to leave and The Wife said to one of them “You don’t want to leave yet, there’s another scene in the credits” and they all sat down. She heard one of them say to the other one “We aren’t allowed to leave yet.”)

I live with awesome people.