Popcorn

We were looking for a book about how books are made. Beyond binding, cover, front and back, I know very little of the vocab for publishing but Elliott will not let my empty knowledge of the subject go on much longer. He wants to know what the glue is called that he can see in the binding. We did not luck out and find a book on publishing, nor did we have any luck with LINKcat (why "cat"?), the library's search engine. What we did find was a book on popcorn and why not check that out? We were planning a movie afternoon. We've tried this once before, on a cold October afternoon when I was out of energy to read books, play games, and sound interested in whatever it was that they were interested in at the time. So we went to the library and checked out "Shaggy". It is the 90's version of Shaggy DA, a lawyer-turned-dog uncovers a scientific scam and learns to show his affection for his family. It was too long, and I had no good answers for what a lawyer does, but Dietrich loved it anyway. Elliott was bored and began jumping around on the couch making it miserable for those trying to sit on the couch. So here it is, a gloomy Friday afternoon, our neighbors lent us a DVD, why not have another movie day?

We should have just read the popcorn book. Instead we watched the tale of a penguin family and their heart wrenching adventures of their only son. Our neighbor had cautioned that the movie is realistic in its challenges to wildlife -- but also incredibly cute. Five minutes into the movie, when some of the penguin fathers abandon their nests to go and feed, and thus leave their eggs easy prey to the onlooking gulls, Dietrich is curled into a ball, his cheeks flush. And the scenes escalated from there -- another gull attack (non-fatal), a leopard seal near-attack, nearly lost at sea on an iceberg, an encounter with poachers, and the near loss of the entire rookery's chicks. Of course in the end all the penguins are okay and the poachers are drowned, victims of their own violence. But there is no reassurance for someone who has yet to lose his ability to live in the moment. Dietrich experienced the hellish worry of the penguins about to be eaten by the seal as much as he relaxed with relief when one penguin launched, and lodged, a snowball into its mouth. I knew too well that the penguins would come out on top. I couldn't get in there like he could. Elliott was less bored with this movie (there was no jumping around) but he didn't express much while watching. He occasionally tried to comfort Dietrich, but wasn't sure how best to do that, either. He mostly just watched, sleepily, on my opposite side.

At times I thought I should have never turned it on, or should have turned it off at the sight of the first gull. Wasn't this supposed to make for an easy afternoon? Instead we watched all 76 minutes of the show, then completed the quiz afterwards. By then Dietrich had stopped crying and was relieved to see how the penguins marched off together. But something had settled on him. We talked about the difference between hunters, who hunt for animals legally, and poachers, who take animals illegally to sell for money. We talked about how there are predators and prey, some of each for every animal. But all our talking did little for the emotional roller coaster he had just survived. I was mostly glad to have been next to him during it. Tomorrow, we're reading Popcorn.