Aladdin

I was on the treadmill this morning watching Gilmore Girls reruns on the ABC Family channel (Season 2: Lorelai and Max are engaged for about a minute) when a commercial came on for a upcoming showing of Disney's Aladdin.

When my oldest son was about 3 (he's almost 24, now) I thought I would treat him to a movie. His younger sister had been bugging him and hogging all the attention with her wobbly walking and lispy talking. He needed some extra attention; a Mom and Kid day out. He'd never been to a movie theater before and was very excited. The Little Mermaid had just been released so we headed to the mall.

He lasted about 2 minutes. The beginning of The Little Mermaid has big, loud waves (I can't remember if they were crashing against the shore or against a ship or just against each other. And I can't look it up because Disney keeps its old movies “in the vault.”) and he was terrified. It was just too loud. The movie had barely begun when I scooped him up and carried him out of the theater. After a chocolate ice cream cone, he was fine.

When I naively relayed this story to other mothers with kids his age, there were snickers. He was afraid of The Little Mermaid? Are you serious? I stopped telling the story and it became part of our internal family lore.

Three years later, when he was 6, I took him and his younger sister, 4, to see the new Disney movie, Aladdin. This time, it was their idea. I frankly cannot remember if we had seen any movies in between, but I'm thinking no. Everything was going fine until about halfway through. He jumped up, and ran out of the theater, claiming he had to use the bathroom. I got up to follow him; his sister refused to budge. Yes, I left a 4 year old alone in the theater to chase after her brother. I had a feeling something else besides a biological urge was going on.

I found him in the men's room crying his eyes out. He looked at me and blubbered, “It is so sad that Aladdin doesn't have a mom or a dad!” What? Did I miss that plot point? It was the sweetest thing, really. And this time I didn't share the story until he was old enough to understand how wonderful it is that such a thing would bother him so much.

We stayed away from Disney movies and movie theaters after that. Interestingly, the youngest in the family, also a boy, shared his older brother's dislike of: 1) loud noises in movies; 2) dark theaters; 3) anything sad. Middle child, the only girl, watched Dennis Hopper get beheaded in Speed at the age of 13 without blinking an eye. A story for another time.