From the mouth of babes:transformers vs Mr D

Mr D often comes out with classic comments and observations, but since I’ve developed in the past, a sense of apathy towards blogging (which I can say, thankfully, has changed) I miss sharing them with anyone. Truth be known, my memory is so bad, that I’ve often forgotten the exact string of words by dinner time. And you’ll agree with me, unless you remember the whole thing, it becomes like a joke with a forgotten punch line … conserve the oxygen!

Tuesday is DVD day for us. We go down in the afternoon and collect up our supply of DVDs for the week (they’re $2 on Tuesdays). Dylan cottoned on at an early age about movie and program classifications (another one of the light bulb moments where he made sense of it all) meaning we’ve avoided the worst of the nagging and explanations about why things are not appropriate to watch, and potential meltdowns that come from all that stuff.

If he wants something that is rated PG (Parental Guidance Recommended) he’ll come to me and we’ll negotiate it. The cartoons of The Ninja Turtles and Transformers are both rated PG, and as a consequence we’ve been able to stop him from watching them – holding him off with the ‘when your older’ or “I don’t want to watch this with you” (which is not a lie!) We have another trouble moderating his obsession with guns without introducing more of it.

So Tuesday, I was cruising for my weekly movie, when I heard his voice coming from the front counter.

“Excuse me,” this little-big voice says. “Why have you put G on Transformers. It’s got guns and violence in it and my Mum and I can’t watch it?” He knows what ‘G’ means and he knows that it’s never on Transformers.

I had to go and interpret for the video store manager, who looked a little perplexed and taken aback but the tongue lashing my four year old had just served him.

First I had to explain to Mr D, that the man behind the counter didn’t choose what ratings went on the DVDs – the manager explained that it’s the Board of Classification that did that. But that didn’t solve Mr D’s dilemma about Transformers being rated G. The best the manager could come up with was that it was ‘just a cartoon’ … like that was going to wash with Mr D. He frogmarched me off to show me the offending DVD, which was a spin off from the original Transformers, which obviously has less violence and I struggled to try and explain it all to the manager who watched on rather amused – or was it bemused?

What I loved about this episode was that a) Mr D discovered the anomaly, b) decided to do something about it and c) did something about it all by himself. He didn’t talk to me about it – he took it up with the person who he saw was responsible for the indiscretion.