I was surprised to hear Diana laughing out loud in the dark theater.
We were watching this short film in the 4D theater at the LEGOLAND Discovery Center in a Chicago suburb. The film was a mini-sequel to The Lego Movie. It was funny, but it wasn’t that funny. While Diana respected Ollie’s enjoying of these films, she didn’t really find them that entertaning. While I chuckled at some of the jokes, I wasn’t laughing out loud. Looking over to Diana laughing along with Ollie, I smiled thinking, “hey Diana is actually getting into this whole Lego thing.”
As we left the theater, I told Diana about how I thought that it was interesting that she found that film so funny when she wasn’t into the other Lego movies. She replied, “I wasn’t laughing at the movie, I was laughing at my life.” In that moment I knew exactly what she was talking about. Diana loves all of us, and she is more than happy to do things for Ollie including things she doesn’t necessarily enjoy doing. However, sitting in that 4D theater, which basically was..okay, hang on a second, I got to digress here...
A 4D theater experience is basically a 3D movie another “dimension.” This means that during the movie air will be sprayed at you from a tube near your chair or from an overhead fan. Also there are sprays of water. All of these effects are coordinated with the film so for example, if at some point in a film a submarine goes underwater you feel water sprayed in your face. The air unfortunately is the dead air of a movie theater, and the water never feels sanitary. Overall it’s unpleasant and kind of uncomfortable “dimension” to add to watching a film. I find myself on edge the entire time wondering when I will feel a gust of warm dead air, or water spraying in my face as I try to follow what is inevitable a mediocre short film.
So sitting in a theater anticipating being sprayed in the face with, in this Lego film was lemonade can feel absurd, and ridiculous.
We all have these moments as parents when you wonder how your life got to this point of ridiculousness. I’ve had many of these moments. There was that time I was installing a car-seat when the wind-chill temperature was below zero. Searching through ebay for the exact Thomas The Tank Engine toy that Ollie was obsessed with that no longer was in production (I was trying to find a spare after he freaked out after misplacing it one afternoon).
Any time I’ve watched Super Wings with Ollie (that show is AWFUL). Listening to “Hotel California” for an hour straight in the car with the vain hope that it would stop Ollie from screaming during a long drive (he it worked some of the time). Shopping at three different hardware stores for hardware for a kitchen play-set that I trash picked from a house five doors down and spent a week cleaning and repairing. Oh, and there was the time, that the morning after a rain storm, I was sifting through mud by a storm drain for an arm that fell off one of Ollie’s Transformer toy’s that he lost the night before running in from the rain, which I somehow found.
You laugh at these moments, but the laughter doesn't stop you from stopping the activity, or giving up. You just keep on, because even though you know it’s ridiculous, you are doing it for the little one in your life, and even though it’s absurd, you know it’s worth it.
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