That Cannot Be
Gloria read Nim's Island to Eli 6.8 over the last few days, and since the movie opened up on Friday, we decided to make it a birthday family outing.Eli has a bit of poison ivy or something on his skin right now. The doctor isn't quite sure, and we have no idea where he would have even come in contact. Not our backyard, because I spent about two hours taking every single vine off the fence, and there was no poison ivy or poison oak there.
He's been a very good sport, and hasn't complained much at all, but he talks about it. All the time.
Right before we left for the movie, he was talking about it again. Gloria said "Okay, Eli, we're not going to talk about poison ivy on the way to the movie, okay?"
"RIGHT," he said.
"Are you ready to go?" she asked.
"I just need to get a notebook," he said. He got a notebook and pencil out of his school supplies, and off we went. I started the car and pulled out of the driveway.
"Mom, how do you SPELL 'poison ivy'?" he asked.
"Eli! I thought we weren't going to talk about poison ivy."
"We AREN'T. I just need to know how to SPELL it."
"Okay, but after this, no more talk about poison ivy," she said.
"I PROMISE," he said loudly.
"It's spelled p-o-i-s-o-n i-v-y," she said. He scribbled furiously in the backseat.
"GOT IT," he said. "Thanks." It was quiet for a few seconds. "If it's LEAVES OF THREE, then LET IT BE," he said.
Nim's Island was rated PG, and I wouldn't normally let Eli anywhere near a PG film, but he was already familiar with the book (which was fine for his age), and the ratings advisory said "mild adventure action and brief language."
I didn't know what that might mean, but it didn't sound like much--maybe a scary adventure scene and one or two "damns." So I told him we could go, but said that there might be one or two bad words.
So we watched the movie (running time: six hours and seven minutes, or maybe it only seemed that long, but Eli really enjoyed it), and as we were walking out to the parking lot, Gloria said "So Eli, what did you think of the movie?"
"I have one question," he said. "WHERE were the BAD WORDS?" Gloria and I started laughing. "Seriously, there wasn't ONE bad word in the WHOLE movie! I was LISTENING! That CANNOT be PG!"
<< Home