My Ears May Never Recover

I think Lilly set a world-record for the most questions asked in a two-hour time frame. 

She also undoubtedly holds the Undisputed All Universe Title for asking the same question at least 50 times during one movie.

"Is he going to get killed?"

I wish I could tell you she fabricated these questions during a viewing of "Cinderella" or "Care Bears" but that would be a lie.

Brad and I have been getting excited about the return of Indiana Jones. At one point during childhood, I think I ate three Big Mac value meals in one weekend in a quest to buy all three of the movies at McDonald's for $5 each. (On VHS, of course).

And because of the fabulous marketers at Lucasfilm, Jackson already knows tons about Indy and his adventures, even though he's never so much as seen any of the movies.

Until tonight.

Brad and I thought it might be a good opportunity to spread the Gospel of Indy to our children in our ongoing crusade (I am going to try to use as many puns as possible in this post) to educate our children in cinematic greatness according to our low and rather uncouth standards.

Even though we are proud owners of the Indiana Jones Trilogy on DVD, I'm not sure that we'd ever watched the movies since the mid 1990's. I have a strong feeling the boxed set was on sale at Costco and it just felt right to spend $30 to have Indiana Jones at our very fingertips in case of a Raiders of the Lost Ark Emergency.

That emergency occurred tonight, although I underestimated the amount of blood spatter by a factor of 20. And the number of skeletons with cracking necks by a factor of 9 million. 

Before we even started the movie, we gave a Cliffs Notes-style plot synopsis, overstating the fact that INDY DOES NOT GET KILLED. 

NEVER. 

BECAUSE THERE ARE THREE MOVIES.

DUH.

It was shocking how many times we compared Indiana Jones to The Backyardigans. Uniqua, Pablo & Co. came in so handy as we referenced pyramids and booby traps. See? Nick Jr. is stimulating young minds across America every single day.

The schema-building strategy in no way deterred Lilly from asking an average of five questions a minute. That is not a made up statistic like I am known to throw out from time to time. In my ongoing pursuit of journalistic excellence, I set the timer and started counting how many questions she asked per minute. 

That experiment only lasted a few minutes because I couldn't take it anymore. In that brief time, she asked over 23 questions. "What's going to happen next?' competed with "Is he a Nazi?" for first place.

When she started asking questions like "Why is he wearing a white shirt?" I knew that the greater significance of Indy's journey to find the Ark of the Covenant was lost(!) and Lilly was more fascinated with the snakes and drinking competitions (which I also forget occurred more than once.) At which point we started skipping through large sections of the movie.

This post obviously serves as the antithesis of solid parenting advice. In case you were thinking of letting your 4 year-old daughter watch Indiana Jones, you might rethink that. Apparently we are the only ones who remembered gunfire and violent punching exchanges with such warm and fuzzy memories. 

Tomorrow we'll fire up "Die Hard."

Kidding. I KID. Of course. Not serious.

So anyway, check out the widget that Lucasfilm somehow magically implanted on my sidebar. (The Internet: super amazing!)  I'm apparently some sort of fan correspondent. I'm not sure if I'm trying to win a date with Harrison Ford or just tickets to the movie, but I'll take anything that's free and I do not limit myself to chicken sandwiches.

May the Holy Grail be with you.