On the big screen

Here in the teeny tiny rental house, we're not allowed to put up the redneck pool. (no fence, liability, bla bla bla) And so summer is not quite the hot splash it's been for the past forever years. Quite frankly, there's not a lot to do that's not hooked to an electric cord or internet connection when you're 10, 13, and 44. (Seriously, we do read. We're marching through the entire Harry Potter series. Curt's read almost all the Jack Reacher books. I'm mixing up some teaching reading books with books that I actually read to enjoy.)

Today we went to the movies. 

To watch somebody else's plug-in. 

It hit me while we were watching Monsters University that around ten years ago, Monsters Inc. was Camden's first movie in a theater. 

Oh, he already knew movies in a big way by that time. 

We'd watched Babe at least 99 times on VHS.

Camden was two and some, and I was knocked up with Benjy and still in the throes of morning, afternoon, and worse-at-night sickness. The Tanglewood cinema wasn't yet a Barnes & Noble. Edie, our neighbor friend who adored Baby Camden went with us. Camden was the perfect movie viewer. No extraneous noise. No bathroom breaks. Happy without the large popcorn. (Those were the days.)

Monsters Inc. was special. Like Babe, Mike and Sully make me puddly, to a degree. To this day though, when I hear its theme song, I almost feel that prenatal nausea. But it's all worth it to see Sully and Mike scare because they care.

Fast forward 10 years to today. And then 6 hours from the time we started Monsters University at the Enfield theater. We gathered in the living room of the teeny tiny house and watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire not on HD because it's cheaper that way. Camden had seen it, read it, and opted for an evening on his own playing Star Trek. (geesh) 




Benjy, who was kicking in utero during Monsters Inc, was shushing me whenever I got anxious about Harry and Cedric, et al. We had traded brightly colored and happy monsters for the dark and spooky He Who Shall Not Be Named. We'd grown up a bit, I suppose. 

Camden eventually joined us to present his eye tooth he'd finally, finally, lost. The very eye tooth he'd recently sprouted when he first met Mike and Sully.