Like Father...

It took a $22 trip to Best Buy to bring about a really cool moment for me today.

"The Mist" hit DVD on Tuesday, and thought, after a week of contemplation on the topic I realized I hated the ending, everything but the last 10 minutes were cracker jack and completely worth watching again and showing to friends. The two-desk special edition with the die-chrome cover went through the scanner and right into the backseat of my car for alter transfer to my DVD collection.

While I usually don't pick up my two daughters from day care, but today was the exception. I tossed the baby and the four-year-old in the seat, and immediately the oldest picks up "The Mist" and asks if she can watch it. I said, probably not as it was full of monsters.

"I love monsters," she said.

"Probably not these monsters. They're really scary."

"I won't be scared."

She sits for a minute, studying the back of the box.

"Is this a giant spider?"
"Kind of."

"What does it do?"

I explain "The Mist" as best I can to a four-year-old, and am peppered with questions as we pull into the driveway, open the door, unhook the baby and start to prepare dinner. She's all over this concept wanting to know about the boy on the cover and if the monsters got him ("no, the monster doesn't get him." "Does he die?" "Yes, he dies." "How does he die?" and on and on). To be honest, I don't sugarcoat the thing. If she wants to know about the nasty little monster movie I bought, I'll be happy to tell her. It's the same courtesy my parents extended me.

I remember, quite clearly, being a little older than my daughter is now, and grilling my parents about the horror movies they watched (coincidentally, the horror movies I now watch and make fun of). "Creepshow," "The Cat's Eye," "Bloody Birthday," "The Twilight Zone Movie," "The Dead Zone," "Maniac," I remember vividly the boxes in the video stores teasing blood and promising more, and my parents telling me about the ones they watched, though I'm pretty sure they looked at each other with slight trepidation over what, exactly to tell me. I remember being put to bed in a sleeping bag as my parents and their friends drank beer and watched bad horror movies, something I've done to the kid.

The descriptions of horror must have taken route in my brain, because up until 5th grade I was obsessed with horror movies - Freddy and Jason covered my notebooks at school (something that was brought up at multiple parent/teacher conferences, I'm sure), but I never watched the things. Gore scared me to the point of panic attack, but I couldn't get enough of the idea of gore or monsters or killers with bladed gloves. Having watched literally thousands of horror movies, I can tell you in all honesty it was 30 times worse in my head.

Given that background, it was proof positive, to me, that my kidd-o is a lot like me. I think I know what's going through her head, which is a rarity. She's fascinated by the horror, and as long as my wife is out of earshot, I think I'll tell her everything she wants to know - with a few edits, of course.

There's no way she's watching "The Mist," any time soon, though. We have a few miles to go before we get anything like in the DVD player during family hour.