The Green

Sorry slow posting over the past week, I got a sinus infection, and then the flu on top of that. It was gross and I was miserable.

So we went as a family to see Meet the Robinsons this past Monday. Unfortunately, my wife was feeling ill with the same aforementioned gross affliction I suffered through, so she stayed home and I hauled four kids up to the Cinema 6 here in Tooele.

What a great movie! For the first twenty minutes or so, I just thought the movie was… well, bizarre. In particular, the introduction to the Robinsons was absolutely surreal and vaguely reminded me of the terrifying video sequences from Dumbo which gave me nightmares as a child. (That subject is blog-worthy on its own, I swear the Disney animators were tripping out on something when they did that one.) But shortly thereafter, the story became more engaging as you begin to be able to put the pieces together for who is who, and the story very satisfyingly allows the audience to make the conclusions just a few moments before it’s explicitly divulged.

Nice. I like it when a movie can do that and not rely on a trick. Subtle clues, added together, then validate the conclusion your audience just arrived at. Slick.

As before in “The Bathroom Stall“, I hauled the boys off to the restroom after the show. Our youngest is currently resisting potty training… when he’s angry or unhappy, he likes to express his displeasure in a way that he knows will get some reaction, namely by peeing on the floor.

You know, this situation reminds me vaguely of the situation we are in in Iraq. For years, we attempted to deprive Saddam Hussein of the ammunition he would use to oppress his people, but at the same time provided him the raw materials (Oil For Food) he needed to maintain basic sustenance. Well, that was enough to keep him armed and ready, too. The situation with my son is like that. We do our best to deprive him of ammunition, but he can always make more, no matter how he has to scrounge and scrape to do so.

Anyway, the boys started to line up and do their thing, but Elijah (my middle son) decided at the last moment to use a stall rather than the urinal.

“Hey, Dad!” he shouted from the stall, excited. “The water’s blue!”

“That’s great, son,” I said as I smiled apologetically at the other fellows milling about waiting for their kids to finish, too, and rolled my eyes a little. A gentleman relieving himself at a urinal glanced my way and offered me a sympathetic grin with eyebrows raised.

In case you’re not aware of the rules of men’s urinals, receiving a smile from a stranger standing at a urinal is disturbing and an explicit violation of rule number twelve: “Always look at the wall. Looking down means you do not know what you are doing or that you are obsessed. Looking at someone else is threatening.”

“This is so cool, dad!” came the excited five-year-old voice from the stall. “I’m peeing a lot lot lot, and the water’s green now!”

Urinal-looker turned to me and said jokingly “So is he learning his colors, or did you feed him something special?”

Weirded-out, I just chuckled nervously.

“Dad, you have to come look at this! I made my pee turn green!” he shouted.

By this point, the entire bathroom was looking toward the stall. Any hopes of salvaging the situation and respecting the rules of the urinal were dashed, so I reluctantly trotted over to the stall, congratulated Elijah on what a great job he did making the bowl green, and herded the kids out to the car.