Since it’s close to my birthday, I got to choose Friday night’s movie for pizza-and-a-movie night.
I chose The Princess and the Frog, much to my sons’ chagrin. (Mwah-hahahahahaha!) I made my boys sit through a Disney Princess Movie. Surely that ranks somewhere on a list of cruel and unusual punishments.
Cute, cute film. I loved it. But during the songs, Zach was cringing. He hates musicals. Actually, so do I. As does my dad. I guess the three of us are too practical for that—I mean, WHO stops in the middle of what they’re doing to burst into song about it?
My idea of hell would be non-stop Bollywood features, for that very reason. And Chicago? Oh wow—how I wish I’d known what that was about before I popped in the DVD. That’s two hours of my life that I’ll never get back.
But for some reason, the musical bits don’t bother me in animated Disney features. It’s the one format where that doesn’t feel so totally, terribly wrong.
Anyway, the next day, we’re riding in the car together, just Zach and I. He mentioned that he didn’t totally hate the Princess movie, just the musical parts.
“You know I hate musicals,” he said.
“So…” I said, “What if your future wife really likes musicals?”
“I think I’d have to find out about that before I proposed.”
I laughed. “So that would be a deal-breaker, then?”
“OH yeah.”
“But what if she has every other characteristic you want in a wife, except for that one thing about liking musicals?”
Silence.
“You know, you could always compromise. She could watch her musicals while you play your Xbox.”
“Hey, yeah…that would work,” he said. “But ONLY if I am in a different room!”
Everyone was quick to tell me how annoying middle-schoolers could be, but why didn’t anyone tell me how much fun it is to converse with them?