Penguins

Sunday Sonya and John and I made our first attempt to go to the movies as a family. It didn't go badly but it wasn't what you would call a success, either.

The movie? A noon showing of March of the Penguins.

"Peng! Peng peng!" John would say when he saw the commercials for the movie on television at home. So that means he was interested, right?

In the lobby at the Elmwood Palace Sonya went to get popcorn while I chased the boy around as he gaped and pointed. The giant clock over the concession stand really impressed him.

"Tick tock! Tick tock!" he yelled.

I let him run around a bit more and then we corralled him into the theatre in time for the trailers.

And the trailers went well! Most of them were for upcoming computer animation movies, and John was very intent on them. One of them showed the Twentieth Century Fox logo before the trailer.

"Bobby!" John yelled. That's Bobby as in Bobby Hill, from King of the Hill.

"Harry," he said during the new trailer for the new Harry Potter movie.

Don't say my kid doesn't know his pop culture. He's a genius.

But the movie itself, sadly, just didn't hold his interest. True, he'd look at the screen and say "peng peng" (which seemed to annoy the hell out of the old lady in front of us; if we'd stayed any longer I could tell she was going to get ugly) but he was far more worried about getting some more milk. He'd sucked it all down during the first five minutes of the movie after eating half a bag of popcorn.

"Milk! Milk!" he demanded over the dulcet tones of Morgan Freeman's narration, "ding dang milk! Down! Down!" All the while struggling to get out of my lap and beat the old lady on the top of her head.

So I took him out and let him run up and down the halls. Sonya joined us shortly, and then we went shopping. It was still fun, but I don't know what the hell happened to those penguins.