You can do a lot of things when there’s a 4-year-old in the room: You can juggle knives. You can teach the kid how to breathe fire using kerosene and a lighter. You can commit federal crimes and embezzle billions of dollars from unsuspecting companies.
But what you can’t do — what you must NEVER do! — is let a scary scene from a scary movie flash on the TV or computer while that child is watching. Eyeballs will pop out. Hair will curl. And you’ll be explaining (and lying about) that scene for the next 12 or 13 years. Or at least until her lawyers have finished working you over.
I learned this lesson the hard way the other night. We were at my brother’s house for a cookout, and my sister-in-law was explaining her Halloween costume. Only, there is no explaining her Halloween costume. It’s an obscure character from that quirky, spooky, goofy 80s flick, “Beetlejuice.” Seen it? Know who Delia Deetz is? Of course you don’t. Nobody does. My wife had never even seen “Beetlejuice,” so my sister-in-law thought she would show on the computer a scene from the flick.
It’s a great scene, so let me explain it as best I can: Two ghosts are trying to run a couple of New York yuppies out of their house, and they figure they can do it by making assembled guests dance around the dinner table to Harry Belafonte’s “Day-O.”
It’s a classic and pretty funny stuff — even for a 4-year-old. I know this because mine walked over, captivated by it.
But I’ve left out how the scene ends … which I knew, I absolutely knew! was coming. The music stops, the people fall into their chairs and the shrimp cocktails on the table jump up at the guests like hands trying to grab them.
Boo!
It’s a make-you-jump scene, and the little one definitely jumped. Then she turned on her heels and calmly walked away mumbling, “Why did the hands come out of the table? Hands shouldn’t have come out of the table.”
My daughter never screams or runs away crying when she sees something frightening. Instead, she excuses herself and wanders off to rationalize and better understand it: “… and there were little pink things. What were those little pink things?”
Oh, we’re terrible parents.
That’s all she talked about the rest of the night, and even the next morning. “It’s OK,” I said while we drove home. “That was just one scene in the movie. It’s actually a pretty funny flick.”
She got terribly serious, and even in the rear view mirror I could see her lower lip starting to quiver. Tears began to well up in her eyes. “You … you mean you’ve seen it before?”
Oh, I’m a buffoon. She sounded betrayed, like I should have known better and shielded her eyes — 4-year-olds are so wise and observant. And she also sounded like she thought I was some kind of warped psychopath for finding stuff that scares little kids funny.
“You pull the car over this instant so I can get out,” I expected to hear. “You’re a bad father, a very BAD father.”
My wife and I spent the rest of the evening explaining our own version of the plot — a ghost-free version — while she said things like, “I see. So shrimp don’t really attack you?”
“No, no,” I said. “It’s actually quite the opposite. We batter them up and deep fry them in burning …” My wife stuck an elbow in my ribs. I don’t know when to stop.
I remember when I was a kid my dad went to see the movie “Alien.” I was 6 years old, and he came home looking shaken, not stirred, and white like a ghost. I was anxious to know what a movie called “Alien” was all about. Were they nice aliens? Did they do tricks? Maybe they wore magic hats or granted special wishes?
Turns out I was a little off. This alien killed almost everyone on the space ship. It also turns out you get your first glimpse of it only after … how do I put this nicely? … it bursts forth from some unsuspecting man’s chest.
And there’s really no good way, I suspect, to explain that important plot point to a 6-year-old. What I seem to remember hearing my dad say was: “The guy’s chest blows up and I think I’m gonna’ go throw up now.”
I pondered the unfathomable meaning of this, and my dad spent the next 12 to 13 years trying to explain it to me.
So now I know what I have ahead of me, just like I know to never let anything terrifying flash up on the screen again. Not to mention how serving shrimp cocktail at a dinner party is permanently out of the question … for ever!