Heston Blumenthal’s wacky creations captivated the Sprogs recently, when they saw Heston’s Feasts at their cousins’ house. So Husband racked up an episode of Heston’s Mission Impossible for them the other night. Heston’s challenge was to makeover cinema snacks. Perfect, we thought. Until he started experimenting with 4D theatre and providing squirts of scent to accompany movies. The film he chose was Perfume. At first we were entertained by him squirting smelly fish smells and serving anchovy something or others during the market scene, then squirting baby scent and serving rice pudding during a scene with a newborn. But things took a turn for the hairy when he started discussing sperm milkshakes and scents during the orgy scene. That’s right, the orgy scene. Lots of naked people suddenly started writhing around on the screen while Heston squirted a semen atomiser around the cinema.
Husband stared at me in wide-eyed, frozen horror. I stared at Husband in wide-eyed, frozen horror. The children stared at the screen like nothing usual was happening. They didn’t ask a single leading question. They didn’t say “What’s sperm, Mummy?” or “What’s an orgy, Daddy?”
I’m sure it will come up – so to speak – at some least-expect-it moment in the future.
When the action moved on to hot dogs with the mustard and tomato sauce on the inside, I told Husband I no longer felt the slightest bit guilty about giving Sprog 1 a book about Norman Bates (click here for a refresher). I’m thinking Husband showing them an orgy on TV tops it.
The next morning I committed another parental faux pas of my own. Sprog 2 was eating brekkie when she started crying and complaining about a sore belly. I packed her off to the bathroom and blithely pottered around the kitchen for a few minutes before thinking, “Hmmm, Sprog 2 has been gone for a while, I should check up on her.” I got to the bathroom to find her huddled over the toilet, her pyjama shirt tossed to one side because she was “hot” (drenched in sweat), she staggered off the toilet, started swaying, said she couldn’t see very well and wobbled towards the door. I spun her around and made her wash her hands, then caught her in a swoon. Because, of course, hygiene is the first thing on your mind when a sick child is about to faint/collapse …
I still feel bad about that.
Another two parenting errors down, 5000 to go …
HOW’S YOUR PARENTING SCORE CARD COMING ALONG?
July 31, 2012 at 1:51 pm
Our mistake was Muriel’s Wedding with a 7 and 8 year old. We’d both seen it a couple of times, and knew there was the one scene to fast forward through, but the bad language in it hadn’t registered until you watch it with children. One of the last lines is: ‘ you’ re a pack of c#$*suckers.’ We looked at each other appalled, but the kids didn’t say anything and it was never (at least to our knowledge) repeated.