laptop confessional

H had a difficult moment last night, which makes me wonder how he'll sleep tonight. We were watching a movie, and H was only intermittently interested in it (the plot line was above him but the characters, including a young girl, had him checking in regularly with questions.) The movie ("Whale Rider") is pretty inoffensive but there's a particularly sad scene at the climax (which resolves happily at the end) that brought my boy to absolute sobs, which came as a guilty shock to me. There's no violence, which is the main thing I guard against, but the scene clearly depicts a dramatic fracture in two relationships -- there's almost no dialogue, but the acting is incredible, and one of the actors is crying. Evidently he'd been tracking the buildup to the scene well enough that he could identify a little with the characters (and, he was pretty tired by 9pm.) Anyway, it was just heartbreaking to see him so affected by fiction, and while I guess I'm not surprised, I feel badly about it -- he needed help calming down. It took a Curious George book to bring him around. *sigh* Another reason to love George. As someone who can remember having moments like these as a kid, I'm really torn as to how much I should protect him. I remember getting hold of a copy of "Hiroshima" in the 5th grade, and weeping in horror as I read it. On the one hand, that's sad. On the other hand, it's not a bad part of who I am, nor was the experience damaging to my worldview. The opposite, probably.