I Was Extremely Careful About TV.
Shane is a fan of horror movies.
This started when he was about 11, and discovered that scary books were wildly entertaining. Short, scary videos came next – things like the YouTube jump-scare video. Or maybe it was just a natural progression to scary videos after his obsession with safe-but-terrifying roller coasters.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of horror movies are rated R. Thanks to my own tender-age issues, this means that Shane isn’t allowed to watch them.
There’s a chance that I am highly sensitive. I was so afraid of the creepy guy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that we watched that part of the movie on fast-forward because I couldn’t stand to look at him. The winged monkeys in The Wizard of Oz gave me nightmares for years. And when I finally got old enough to watch rated R movies on my own, the first one I watched was The Shining. I didn’t sleep for a week.
When my kids were very young, I was extremely careful about TV. They only watched one, half-hour video per day – usually Elmo’s World or Little Einsteins or The Backyardigans. Still, there was a tornado on Elmo’s World that caused both of the boys to run screaming from the room in tears. So as much as possible, we stuck to really happy television.
We would occasionally watch a movie – but Finding Nemo caused Dylan to sob uncontrollably when Nemo was caught in the fisherman’s net. (To be fair, Dylan was 3.)In Spy Kids, there were half a dozen “fooglies” and a bad guy with disgusting, distorted faces growing out of the sides of his head. Shane’s reaction was not good.
And Elmo in Grouchland had an evil villain who stole kids’ toys – and mortified the entire audience. We actually left the theater – as did a slew of other families – when that guy emerged. (The Sesame Street folks really might want to do a few more focus groups before releasing anything else with thick, angry eyebrows.)
When Shane became interested in making his own videos, Bill showed him the tremendously elaborate, purposefully horrifying video for Michael Jackson’s Thriller. Shane never got over it. (I would like to note that I was not consulted when Bill made this decision.)
So when Dylan’s English teacher sent home a permission form to watch Wind Talkers which is just gratuitous violence on a stick, I denied permission. Dylan was the only 8th grader in the (tiny private) school who was not allowed to watch a rated R movie.
And I have never lived it down.
So when Shane became obsessed with It, the Stephen King clown movie released last year, we watched the old, made-for-TV version instead. But I heard it from both boys: We aren’t scared of rated-R movies!
Many R-rated movies still scare me.
I had read enough – and seen enough – Stephen King to offer a viable option. Dylan was old enough to watch the movie, but I told Shane he had to read an entire Stephen King book first.
What a mistake. Shane read Carrie. And then we watched the R-rated It.
Shane is already asking to see yet another R-rated movie – so I am now paying for allowing an It screening.
Shane said, “If you’re worried about a movie scarring me or scaring me – which are spelled the same way, by the way – the rating doesn’t really matter at all. I’ve been scarred by Spy Kids and the music video for Thriller, but It didn’t scare me at all.”
I guess I will continue to pay.