No Way We're Watching Finding Nemo

Way way back before, in the misty haze of memory lost to time and I forget what else, I used to be married. I was under the impression that it was a pretty sweet deal, what with my wife making money and me committed to the not-working angle. But now that there has been some distance (I refer you back to the first sentence re: misty haze) I can see things with a bit more perspective.

This is my way of admitting that yes, maybe, OK, some things about it sucked. It made dating pretty inconvenient. You can't display your collection of vintage lesbian clown porn in the way it deserves. The day your spouse says they probably never loved you just before they move out is kind of a drag. Going to movies got really hard after the kids were born.

I think of all those challenges, I'd say the movie thing was the worst. I even devoted a whole series of blogposts to the movies I longed for but was denied access to by the oppressive laws against child neglect.

Now that I have 3-4 days free per week (that's every week!), things are much different. Being a fully functional, self-contained adult, I have no compunction nor reservation about going to movies by myself. The up-sides are almost innumerable. It's always automatically at least half price versus taking a date. And it's been at least a year since I had to see anything starring Reese Witherspoon and all her fucking single-gal pluck. You're not fooling anyone there, Chinny. We all know by the end of the movie you're going to end up with that guy, just like the rest of them do. Hell, she even ended up with Johnny Cash and he was a womanizing drug-addict brother-murderer with a fucked-up Joaquin Phoenix harelip.

OK, so those are just two up-sides. Turns out they were pretty easily numberable.

The only downside is that now when I go to movies... just sometimes... I weep.

I know. It's embarrassing. There's nothing more pathetic than a dude by himself at the movies weeping. But come on, Leonardo DiCaprio hadn't seen his kids in all those years and the top was spinning and then it kind of wobbled... I'm not made of fucking stone, OK?

What bugs me is that I didn't used to be like this. I used be a man. I did manly things. I used to yell at the television when the performance of the local sporting franchise would displease me in some way. I would drive, relying solely on my innate hunter-gatherer internal compass to guide me, often to places I did not know I had intended to go. I would stand around at the port of Long Beach on a Friday evening and offer handjobs to longshoreman in exchange for beer money.

That last one is still manly. It has to be. Jerking off is manly. Being a longshoreman is manly. Ergo, jerking off a longshoreman? Double-manly. That's not just logic, that's fucking algebra. And if that isn't enough to convince you, consider: I don't even drink beer.

I don't cry at every movie. I made it through most of The A-Team relatively dry. But then it was all I could do to concentrate on the dialogue and the delicate subtlety of plot, so it was hard to let myself go all the way, emotionally speaking.

I have some specific triggers. One now is anything to do with fathers and sons. One more way in which my kids have ruined me. There's a scene in the new Harry Potter when one of the weird clone Weasley boys has his ear blown off. There's a moment of parental concern, totally fleeting, by the parents (expertly, if briefly, played by Mark Williams and Julie Walters) that choked me up--it pains me to say--both times I saw the thing in the theaters. And no, I hadn't forgotten it was coming the second time, either. Knowing it was going to happen actually kind of made it worse.

The other thing is stuttering. My oldest boy stutters a bit. I saw this movie called Rocket Science on cable one time about a kid who stutters and the crass high school bitch who lures him onto the debate team (played expertly by then-newcomer Anna Kendrick), the last scene of which is the kid struggling heroically to place an order for pizza. Total emotional devastation. I could lose a goddamned limb and feel less.

What is wrong here? I get that there's some kind of paternal instinct-o-meter kicking in and whatever, but I fail to see the evolutionary benefit. How does it make it more likely that I will survive and allow my offspring to survive by turning me into a total pussy?

The problem is the next movie I want to see is The King's Speech, with Colin Firth (yes, yes...) playing reluctant King George VI attempting to overcome his debilitating stutter to give an important wartime speech. There will be much struggling, which will no doubt be of the heroic type. In the end the violins will swell and Colin Firth will act his pasty old ass off and... hang on.. hang on... there's something in my eye...