“Lisa, vampires are make-believe, like elves, gremlins, and Eskimos.”*

I grew up in a household where going to see movies (in the actual Movie Theater! gasp!) was a weekly occurrence. Some of my earliest and fondest childhood memories are, in fact, of swimming in enormous theater seats in the dark, craning my neck to see around the gigantic screen-eclipsing orbs of adult human heads in front of me, trying to get a glimpse of whatever luminous spectacle was unraveling in the near-distance. I have vivid recollections of weekly trips to Shakey's Pizza, where my family would gorge ourselves to an almost heroic degree on thin slices and Bubble Up, and then pile into our wood-trimmed boat of a station wagon to motor on over to the theater, my brother and I rattling around in the “way back” of the vehicle like loose change in a dryer (ah, ye olde unregulated 1970s, how I miss thee).

Some of the films we saw back then were typical children's fare -- The Rescuers, Dumbo, Bambi and the like -- but my parents weren't afraid to stretch and bend the meaning of the words “kid friendly,” and take us to movies that might in fact permanently scar our fragile young psyches. I recall, for example, seeing Jason and The Argonauts in the theater at age six or seven, and its climatic humans-versus-skeletal-remains-of-humans battle was definitely seared into my immature, ill-equipped-to-deal-or-process brain for a long time after. Other entrants into my own personal Filmic Trauma I Experienced Before Age Ten hall of fame (shame?) include Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Damnation Alley, and (OMFGWTF!) Alien. IN YOUR FACE, MPAA! HA HA HA!

The weird thing is, I honestly never remember being scared. Which is not to say I didn't jump in my seat when startled by something on-screen, or grab a parent's hand for comfort, or cover my eyes to block out some particularly heinous scene -- hell, I do those things NOW. But I don't remember ever being reduced to tears or terror, or asking to leave any movie, ever. UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE. AHEM.

And in saying that “AHEM” I'm alluding to the fact that my own daughter is, I'm sad to report, a complete and total pussy when it comes to movies -- an unfortunate reality graphically explicated this weekend as I sat in a theater seat with her body curled into an almost perfectly symmetrical ball on my lap, trembling and sobbing uncontrollably. And that was just during the previews.

BUT! Unlike our previous, failed attempts to get her to sit through March of the Penguins (THE TERROR!) and Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit (THE HORROR!) in the theater, after the first ten-or-so-minutes of hysterics she actually calmed down this time, unfurled her clenched sphere-like form, crawled onto the seat beside me, and started mechanically shoveling popcorn into her face as if in doing so she were filling herself with some kind of magically protective butter-flavored elixir... Orville Redenbacher's Movie Theater Butter Total Invisibility Pop, if you will.

So that's it -- FINALLY, she sat through an entire freakin' movie! Oh, and the flick I dared subject her to? THE SIMPSONS. I know, terrifying, right? She'd been singing that blasted “SpiderPig” song from the commercials for the film all week, so it seemed like something of an enticement (“Does whatever a SpiderPig does?” I must learn more!). Now to commence with a weekly regimen of will-fortifying, soul-strengthening theater-going... I must strike while the iron is hot, my friends!

What are your memories of going to the movies when you were a kid? Any particular experiences or films leave a lasting impression that you'd like to share with the class?

(*From The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror, 1993)