Warning! This blog post contains some minor spoilers for the Pixar movie UP. If you do not want to be spoiled, please leave now and come back after your 11th birthday. Hopefully by that point I’m going to be able to stop rolling my eyes.
I am not a very spiritual person. I believe in live and let live, believe what you believe, make it count because it’ll all be over too soon. But sometimes even I have to sit up and listen to the message that the universe is trying to send me. And the message this weekend was loud and clear: You are an asshole. Stop talking.
I decided to devote the weekend to being a super involved mom. You know, the kind that does shit with her kids nonstop. I remember someone saying “the kids aren’t going to remember your cleaning, but they will remember the fun things that you do with them” and it made sense for about a minute, before I realized that whoever said that probably had a cleaning lady. Because I’m thinking that if the kids are tripping over dust balls and people in Hazmat suits are coming to remove them from the premises, they’ll remember.
But whatever. Husbandrinka was away for the weekend, so it was me and the kids. And because apparently two kids aren’t enough, I invited a few more and took them to see “UP” on Sunday afternoon. In 3D.
Here’s something I forgot to mention: I don’t like kid movies. I don’t enjoy them. They are emotionally manipulative. I must be some kind of a psychic because I know what’s going to happen in each one. And I don’t understand why the movies have to be at such earsplitting volume. I’m guessing that it is to resuscitate me after I went to get a bottle of water and found out that it cost $4.25. They really should sell some Astroglide at the concession stand for smoother and more satisfying sodomy results.
So, I’m watching this movie and give me a fucking break, Pixar. We have to deal with a miscarriage in the first ten minutes? I mean, they’re children. Why not have a few rape/torture scenes too, while you’re at it, you know, to build momentum? But ok, whatever, I’m watching and then we meet our boy hero, Russell. And I see that Russell has Down Syndrome which I think is pretty groundbreaking of Pixar and I love that idea. And as I’m sitting there, I tell one of the kids with me, “see that boy, he is very special. He was born with some challenges, but look at how brave he is!” and my mini-charge fully appreciates my wisdom and says “what challenges?” “Well,” I launch into differently able and everyone is special speech and then I tell him that he has Down Syndrome, which he has had since birth and then I stop talking because some weirdo in front of me turns around and while looking at me through her 3-D glasses says something that sounds like “shush”. Seriously? It’s a kid movie, not a seance. If you expect silence, you are an moron. Besides, I was dispensing wisdom and shaping young minds.
So, then the movie mercifully comes to an end, and I realize that the review in the New York Times that I read did not have a reference to the boy having Down Syndrome and I’m all like ‘the fucking Times. How politically correct do we have to be? If we don’t mention difference, how can we celebrate it?” I rush home and start googling “Pixar’s Up” & Down’s Syndrome and I’m not getting any hits, but maybe Google was tired or something, so I go on Twitter and I ask casually if the boy had Down Syndrome, and Maria laughs her ass off and tells me that no, he is Asian. Which I really don’t think he was. And I’m sure there’s a “UP” and “Down (Syndrome)” symbolism that is in the movie and Pixar will probably turn the company over to the first person who realizes that. Which would be me.
And now I have tell this kid not to tell anyone what I said about the special boy, because he is nothing special.
None of this would have happened if I stayed home and cleaned, like women are supposed to, in the first place.
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