My Precocious Spawn

Well as you can probably surmise, during the pandemic, a LOT of kids these days are having a LOT of movie nights. We are not a tv watching family but come the weekend, when the parents have had it up to here with responsibility and parenting and responsibility and parenting, well, movie nights can be a real responsibility and parenting savior. 

A few weeks ago, Journey 2: The Mysterious Island graced (what is the opposite of "sic?") our screen. Now to no one's shock, Journey 2 didn't win any Oscars. Who cares? It won a couple of (relatively) parenting-free hours and so in my book, Journey 2, is a real winner. Unless of course you are counting Journey 2 as Journey without Steve Perry. It's NOT the same. (Sings softly: Highway run...)

While watching Journey 2, ludicrous plot and all, my six year old kinda shocked me. Granted, I don't think what I'm about to share here indicates he's some sort of nuclear surgeon or anything, but still, I thought it was pretty darn astute.

So let me set the scene for you:

To get off the mysterious island, that is sinking into the ocean by the way, Hank (The Rock) and Sean (Josh Hutcherson) must get to the submarine. Which they found out about by using their wits and, of course, the map. Oh no, they are too late! The submarine, is already in the ocean. Well, right after a "Let's do this!" Hank and Sean make a dive for it. )Who can't hold their breath for three minutes now a days?) But oh no! There's a giant electric eel between them and the sub. I think, if memory serves, as this has been a couple of weeks ago, Hank pile drives the eel after a couple of chest slaps and off-the-ring-ropes forearms, and Hank and Sean make it to the sub. End of story.

But oh no! The battery is dead on the sub. And they can't call triple A for a jump. Whatever will they do?

This is where my six year old comes in. He says, "I know what they are gonna do!" Now mind you he has never seen this movie before. "They're going to use the eel to start the sub!"

And if my name isn't Nikola Tesla, that is exactly what they do. 

So my spawn is precocious on at least two fronts here. One: electricity and how it works. Two: how absolutely ludicrous movie plots can be. 

FFS, the Rock swims out and throws a harpoon, which on one end is attached to an electric cable, and on the other, attached to the Sears battery that starts the submarine.

Having recently seen my retirement numbers, here is to hoping my precocious spawn will support me in my old age with all of the dough from his screenplays. 

JuJu and George

I finished reading Hatchet, along with my nine year old son recently and toward the end of the book he recognized that my voice was “getting different” as I fought off emotion. I was emotional for two reasons: one was just finishing a good book that involves a teenager (not that far away for my nine year old) being rescued after surviving in the Canadian wilderness for close to two months and two, the more powerful reason is that we read it together, as father and son. And the truth is that he is difficult and I am more difficult but reading this book together, we had powerful moments of connection and it became a beautiful, what Heidegger might call, project. A project is powerful in this sense because it posits a future. Over the nights reading I could ask him questions as his excitement showed on his sleeve and I talked about the power of a good story, a good paragraph, a good sentence. We were inside of this book, and it was beautiful and of course, books come to an end, and we would no longer be inside, and I became emotional. The time ended. Which made me think about my radical thanatism: The steadfast belief that I am finite and that I do not transcend this earthly life and how this focuses THIS life and makes seemingly simple moments like finishing a novel with my son, into intense cherishable moments that connect me to meaning and value in the absurdity (absurdism is realism around 18:22). In short my thesis stands, my radical thanatism is healthy, believing individual humans are eternal is, not; it cheapens our individual and collective lives. 

Later that night I also finished George Saunders’ most recent, A Swim In A Pond In The Rain and cannot help but bring relief to the subtitle: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life. The next day I would share Saunders’ thoughts on the power of a good story with my JuJu and I would again become emotional but I prefaced it by telling him why I was emotional the night prior. Because we did that thing together and that time, with you, that time we have, runs out. 

Pardon the imperatives here: Value time, cherish time, it is all you really have. If you don’t believe me, please believe George Saunders (bolding mine):

Hi – I'm reading "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life" by George Saunders and wanted to share this quote with you.

"We ended the previous section by agreeing to confine our expectations for fiction to this: reading fiction changes the state of our minds for a short time afterward. But that may be a bit on the modest side. After all, as we’ve been seeing, reading fiction changes our minds in particular ways, as we step out of our own (limited) consciousness and into another one (or two, or three). So, we might ask, how are we altered, in that “short time afterward”? (Before I give my answer, let’s just say, again, that there’s no need, really, for me to do that. We know how our minds were changed as we read these Russians, because we were there. And we know, if we’ve been lucky enough to have other beautiful reading experiences in our lives, what those did for/to us.) But I’ll give it a try: 

I am reminded that my mind is not the only mind. 

I feel an increased confidence in my ability to imagine the experiences of other people and accept these as valid.

I feel I exist on a continuum with other people: what is in them is in me and vice versa. 

My capacity for language is reenergized. My internal language (the language in which I think) gets richer, more specific and adroit. 

I find myself liking the world more, taking more loving notice of it (this is related to that reenergization of my language). 

I feel luckier to be here and more aware that someday I won’t be. 

I feel more aware of the things of the world and more interested in them. 

So, that’s all pretty good."