Tuesday, March 15, 2005

"So the people who die don't get to graduate?"

So, as you know, I live with this really cool little short person named Jack. One would probably not be able to tell that he is “mine”…(well, except that he quotes Strong Bad and Napoleon as much as I do…and there’s that whole open-mouthed laughing thing we both do…“Got Teeth?”…well, and the fact that he looks EXACTLY like me – right down to the blue eyes, dimples, freckles, everything) due to the fact that we have almost NOTHING in common. He loves to hunt, fish, watch and play sports, be outside as much as humanly possible, etc. Me? I like to read.

He hates the things I like to watch on tv. I blame myself, really, because of that obsession with Voyager I used to have. It all started when we first moved to Oklahoma almost seven years ago and we lived out in this very rural area that didn’t get UPN. Well, I was a HUGE Star Trek Voyager fan so every Wednesday night I would drive myself and The Boy to my grandmother’s house (she lived about 45 minutes away) in order to watch Voyager on her tv that had actual "Big Time City Cable" (she said in her best Daisy Dukes voice). I would bribe Jack with getting to stay up later if he would come along and not complain about having to watch sci-fi. I really thought I was doing him a favor…you know, exposing him to the wonderful world of space ships and aliens and explosions. Nah. He hated it.

I’ve tried to get him to watch Firefly and Buffy and all the other great stuff I like to watch but he refuses. He says it’s “stupid”. Well, finally, last weekend he got sucked into some Buffy with me. He came in the room while I was watching “Graduation Part II” (Season 3 finale) and I told him, “You should sit down and watch this. That dude right there is getting ready to turn into a giant fire-breathing snake and then he’s gonna eat the principal.” Jack’s response? “SWEET.” (When one spends as much time in the principal’s office as Jack does one is able to appreciate the “finer” things in life.)

Anywho, for those of you that have seen that episode, you know that a huge fight ensues and people die. It’s a beautiful thing. ("Death, carnage – it's a Buffy party!") As I am soon to graduate from my current phase of college, Jack and I have spent a tremendous amount of time discussing exactly what it means to “graduate”. (And by tremendous I mean almost none.) So Jack was totally digging on the show but became very concerned when people started dying and their diplomas were strewn across the ground.

He had some very astute questions to ask, such as, “Are those demons? And if so how are they different from vampires? Is the giant snake guy a demon? Are demons cool? How do you know who’s a demon and who’s a good guy? Why doesn’t she have a weapon?” And of course, the occasional , “Ewww,” (like when Harmony got “bit”, as he called it.)

As he stared wide-eyed at the tv I could just see the proverbial wheels a’spinnin’. I sat there, waiting for my son’s next verbal tome wherein I imagined he would delve into the depths of his intellect and compare the scene on the tv to the situation in Iraq or perhaps a certain book he recently read but instead he said, “So the people who die don’t get to graduate?”

I thought I would die laughing.

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