Frightening the Muralist

On the train they play family movies, or at least PG movies, and it is usually geared towards the 8-13 crowd. On the way home the second movie was Chicken Little (2005) which I will not blog about other than to say it was lamer then Madagascar (2005) because at least Madagascar has funny penguins and a hypochondriac giraffe. Chicken Little did have the distinction of scaring the Muralist, practically unheard of. I'm not calling the Muralist unsensitive, but (unlike the Verbalist) she tends to be a hard headed realist and very little phases her. She got the practical gene from Dear Husband's family; industrious, and as happy painting a room as painting a portrait.

As I sat assuring the Muralist the baby alien would be reunited with it's avenging alien parents (not the Chicken Little you remember, huh?), I catalouged the potentially frightening or traumatic movie scenes which didn't ruffle her feathers.

Dumbo: Dumbo's mother chained by the circus folk. No Sweat.

Sleeping Beauty: Malefescent in all her frightening appearences. Shouts of "Get her you prince!" as Prince Phillip does in her dragon form.

Snow White: The Queen poisons an apple. Muralist asks for apples and peanut butter.

Finding Nemo: Of the eight different near death experiences only the very first (all the eggs getting eaten and Nemo's mother dying) concerned her at all.

Bambi: The most tramatizing movie of my childhood, she seemed rather bored with it all. Perhaps it's because Bambi's mom is part of the "circle of life" which brings us to:

The Lion King: King Mufasa's death and the final battle with Scar was of less concern than how bad Sarabi would feel when Simba and Mufasa were gone.

All of this is small beer compared to Jurrasic Park. The blame for this can go directly on my mother and a baby sitting that will go down in infamy. Now the Muralist was (and is) into a pretty heavy dinosaur phase and she and the Verbalist did some pretty slick talking and worked the Soft Touch into letting them watch it. Tyranusaur Rex eating a guy off a toilet? Nothing funnier. It was finally the Raptors stalking the kids in the kitchen which pushed the "scare" button, not to mention the fast forward. Very occasionally she still look in our pantry and announce it dinosaur free.