Back to the Future

Wow, I haven't posted in over a month. We've been pretty busy, I guess -- Gwen had a tonsilectomy and adenoidectomy, our house has been for sale (and still is), work has been demanding (but it is better to be busy than idle), and Xavier is obsessed with Legos (so no change there.)

We watched "Back to the Future" last night with the kids. We thought it was perhaps a little advanced for the kids (at least, some of the boy-girl relationship undertones), but Christopher Lloyd (Dr. Brown) is usually funny at any age, and there were some cool special effects (but it is amazing how cheesy some of them look now.) If you need a reminder of the plot synopsis, teenager Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) ends up taking his friend Dr. Brown's time machine back to 1955 when his parents were teenagers, and his arrival threatens his own future because his mother falls in love with him instead of with his geeky, loser father. He has to get things back on track before it is TOO LATE.

Well, it didn't take too long for Gwen to decide the movie was too scary, so she pretended to do origamy while still secretly watching. Xavier was laughing almost nonstop, and both kids want to watch the next two movies.

As Xavier was tidying his room close to bedtime, he looked up at me and said, "Mom, so that movie was about Tom Peeper?"

"Who?" (My mind races trying to remember a character named Tom -- there was a Marty, a George, a Lorraine, a Biff ...)

"You know, Tom Peeper? The guy who was up in the tree looking in windows with binoculars?"

"Ohhh ..." Shortly after Marty gets back, he catches his teenage father up in a tree watching a woman through a window. "You mean Peeping Tom, not Tom Peeper, and that was a description of George McFly was doing, not his name. What about him?"

Xavier's brow furrowed a little. "One thing I didn't understand ... why was he doing that?"

Why doesn't he ever ask his father these kinds of questions? "Well, he was hoping to see a naked girl."

Xavier's eyebrows rose. "Why?"

"Well, it may be hard for you to believe right now, but teenaged boys like to look at naked girls. I'd better not ever catch you being a peeping Tom, though, or you'll be in big trouble," I added quickly.

His eyebrows rose even higher on his forehead, and he looked somewhat disgusted.

Feeling like something else was indicated, but not sure what he was waiting for, I said, "Unless you are a gay teenaged boy, and then you might like to look at naked men."

Now Xavier looked thoroughly disgusted, and I thought his eyebrows were about to pop off his forehead. Finally, he shook his head unbelievingly and said in a tone of awe-struck disdain, "Teenagers are really wacky!"

I don't think I could say it better myself.