My
grandmother was no given to spending lots of money on our
entertainment and rarely took us anywhere because whenever she did it
went poorly. Once she took us to McDonald's when my sister and I were
quite young and bought us some chicken nugget Happy Meals. We had
never eaten too much deep fried chicken skin and pancreas so we were
unaccustomed to the food of the civilized world and my sister took
one bite and gagged and spit out the lump of deep fried gristle. My
grandmother was horrified because of the shame that Christy had
brought on her and the family by gagging in a fast food restaurant.
She vowed never to take us out to eat again. I think she has stuck to
her guns on that one. She did take us out to the dollar movie one
time to see 'BIG!' the Tom Hanks vehicle that sees him have a wish
granted by a vending machine to turn him from a 13 year-old boy into
a man. He did not win his Oscars for this performance. He would go on
to win those playing men with the mind of a 13 year old, which, in
artistic terms, is better. Anyway, the theater was packed and my
sister and I had to sit a few rows in front of my grandmother and
mother and little brother and sister. She figured we were old enough
to watch a PG movie without direct parental guidance. That is where
she was wrong about halfway though the film the man-boy Tom Hanks is
about to partake of many pleasure which includes a little bra time
with the leading lady, as soon as the actress took off her shirt my
grandma was on her feet and hustling as quickly as her chubby little
legs could carry her she was trying to cover our eyes before things
got really raunchy. Tom Hanks was reaching out to touch the actress's
bra-covered breast when my grandma got to us and yanked us up out of
our seats and to the exits. She was mortified at the kind of filth
that would be permitted in a PG movie and got her money back from the
establishment and we went home hearing the whole time about filth and
pornography being sold to children I didn't get to see how that movie
ended for years until we had a VCR and rented it. That filth was so
uninteresting by that point that I didn't even try to pause it to get
a better look, and for a 14-year-old that is a pretty low standard.
