Our family recently moved from a major city that’s sort of known for its smugness and elitism.  In this city, one of the ways you can improve your hipster status is to boycott watching TV.  You’re soooooo cool if you don’t watch TV, and even cooler if you talk about how you’ve used all your extra free time to travel extensively and experience so many different cultures.  I can’t tell you how relieved I was when, in the early stages of dating, my wife asked, “Do you watch The Sopranos?”  I was like “Oh thank god; she watches TV.”

So, if it was uncool for an individual to watch TV in this city, you can imagine how infinitely uncool it was for a parent to let their child watch TV.  Though many parents seemed to think it was perfectly acceptable to give their 18-month-old an iPhone to stare at the dizzying array of kids apps so they don’t have to talk to them at the dinner table, it was decidedly frowned upon to let your child watch TV. Going out to movies?  Yes, perfectly cool.  Letting them watch TV or a movie at home?  No, definitely poopooed.

So, I work from home.  Before my son went to preschool, I was with him from the time he woke up until my wife got home.  When she arrived, it was often like, “Tag, you’re in.”, so I could go surfing for an hour or two and blow off some steam.  We never used nannies or babysitters, because one of us always available to watch him.  Thus, there is very little downtime for either of us, SO SUE US IF WE LET OUR BOY WATCH A LITTLE TV!!!

And by a little, I do mean a little.  A show here and there, maybe a movie if he’s been really good and we need a little extra recoup time.  And shows are so much better these days.  No longer are cartoons essentially Mad Max with animated bunnies, birds, and coyotes.  They are all so educational and safe yet entertaining.  So if I really needed to concentrate on some work stuff or my wife just needed to decompress after a long day at the office, we would occasionally pop on a show or movie.  And it became evident early on that our son really, really liked what he saw.

When I see most kids watching TV, it’s like they instantly become zombified.  You can take the most intelligent, articulate, thoughtful little kid, and two seconds after plopping them in front of a TV it’s like you gave him a lobotomy.  The only time they will respond to you at all is if you’re actually blocking the TV and they need to open their mouths to ask you to move.  For my son as well, it was very difficult to get his attention once he began watching a show, but we quickly realized it was a little bit different.  It was like he was concentrating on it.  He wasn’t just watching it; he was studying it.

I would love to say that the reason he was concentrating on it so hard was because he was trying to learn every lesson they were teaching in the show, but that wasn’t it. He was storing every bit of information in that steel trap of a brain so that he could potentially use it when he reenacted it later.  At first, we didn’t understand what was going on because he would often do this without props and without words.  I think most parents have a fear of autism in the early stages, and we were concerned he might have it to some degree because after a show he would go around humming and sort of singing little songs and doing these repetitive motions with his hands.  He would pinch his fingers in front of his face and stare at them for what seemed like forever, but nothing was there.  He was quite young, like under two years of age, but we were still worried.  My wife and I were like, “Have you seen that little zigzag motion he does with his hands?  What is that?”  But one day after his vocabulary had grown a bit I asked him, “Buddy, what are you looking at?”  And he said, “It’s the train, Daddy!”  I said, “What train?”  And he said, “This is Gordon.  He’s the biggest, loudest, proudest train.  I like him way better than Thomas.”  Then it all began to make sense.  When we went to the toy store and bought him an actual real Gordon, it was his new best friend and the star of all his movies.  We actually had to buy a backup because we lost one briefly and life as he knew it came to a halt.  But now he had an actual “prop” to play with, and his little hums and hahs and erratic little motions all began to make sense: he was acting out scenes.

Soon he began to alter the scenes and incorporate more props, myself often being one of them.  In the early stages I was often the train tracks because I was long and straight enough to accommodate two oncoming engines.  Or, I was a human bridge for the trains to drive under.   “Here comes Gordon!  Oh no, James is coming the other way.  Oh no, look out!!  CRSHDSHSHHHH!!!!  Ooooooh no, Gordon exploded James.”  I’m like, “Wait, trains never crash on Thomas…”, and he definitely seemed to dislike James’ snootiness.  It was clear that he was in fact changing the storyline and in fact directing the scenes.  He also seemed to have a propensity for the dramatic.  He didn’t want it to end all rosy and happy, even though that’s how all of today’s cartoons end up.  He wanted action and conflict, and it was clear that he was now directing his own scenes to end up the way he wanted.

So, that ended up inspiring one of his first real Halloween outfits: a director.  We got him a beret and a shirt with a clapboard on it and a little megaphone, etc.  I tried to coach him to randomly gather people together and yell, “ACTION!!”  I’m not sure if he ever really pulled it off, but the costume was a big hit.  He could do that same costume every year, because this is not one of those phases that has gone away; it’s here to stay.  For about 4 years now he’s been producing, directing, and usually starring in various productions.  He often tells people, without provocation, that he’s an actor.

Now, this is something that I will not be able to capture in just a few words: my son is not interested in comedies or love stories or feel good movies.  His movies have to be INTENSE.  That has been THE hot word of our house quite some time: “INTENSE”!  I have to be ready to answer the question, “Daddy, is this movie intense?” at all hours of the day.  He once asked me if one of the movies he was creating was the most intense movie I’d ever seen.  I then had a moment when I just got lazy/snarky and I replied, “No, The Exorcist is the most intense movie I’ve ever seen.”  So shortly after that he’d ask me repeatedly as he acted out scenes, “Daddy, is this more intense than The Exorcist?”  You can imagine the sideways look I’ve gotten from his teachers when they ask me, “Has your son seen The Exorcist?”

INTENSE, INTENSE, INTENSE!  It always has to be INTENSE.  I’m a fun loving dad; how did I get such an intense little boy?  And that’s not the only common aspect of his movies.  For one, he loves sequels.  This could be an actual movie that he’s seen taken to Nth degree, or sometimes it’s on original piece of work yet he begins it with the 5th or 6th movie in that franchise.  It’s rad, too, because some of the titles sort of sound like they would be intense movies, but they are often not even real words.  Herge of the Cluss 6, Hoteliman’s Return, Topia the Commerciadle , etc.).  Sometimes he takes a devious and far more intense offshoot from an existing movie, such as Train Agent (a derivative of The Station Agent, I think).  This one was particularly intense, because “all his body parts fell off when he fell off the train”.

So, while I think this behavior is somewhat uncommon, it’s also extremely creative and rad.  I do my best enjoy the ride and participate as much as possible.  And “participating” can be every bit as exhausting as going to the park, as he’s often battling villains, crashing into walls, jumping off beds, climbing up cliffs, falling off cliffs, etc.  Every single night before shower time we must have a Battle Royal between the good guy and the bad guy in the bedroom.  It’s seriously like Wreslemania on a nightly basis, which drives my wife crazy because we’re constantly flying off the top rope and putting ourselves in perilous situations.

But as long as he’s having fun and being creative, I think awesome.  Obviously, if you do something stupid like when I mentioned The Exorcist, you have to be proactive and steer him off of that and into a more positive direction.  But to me this can be every bit as fun and physically exhaustive as playing catch, riding a bike, climbing a tree, playing soccer, etc.  And it’s rad because we’re not playing by any particular set of rules: HE’S the one creating the scripts, and I’m just along for the ride.  As with all of his endeavors, as long as he’s having fun and not hurting anyone, except maybe me with a Flying Elbow, I think it’s a great way to connect with my son and I soak in every bit of it.