Since Paul was here Saturday night, and despite my repeated attempts to discourage it, we (he) unfortunately got started watching Joel Schumacher's unfathomably lousy Batman Forever, which didn't even start until nine o'clock and ran until well past eleven--pretty late for a nine year old to stay up, I'd think.
So after I got done grumbling about the awfulness of Jim Carrey's performance, I told him it was time to go to sleep. As always when he's here, I let him have the bed, while I just tossed some cushions and sheets down on the floor. I shut off the lights, but he still wanted to talk. "Um, I have a question," he began.
Yes?
"You were married, right?"
Right.
"And you wanted to marry my mom?"
Yeah...
"How many other girls did you want to marry?"
Well, none, actually.
"Really? You're forty--?"
Forty-three.
"--and never wanted to marry any other girl?"
Well, I...I never wanted to marry any other woman before I got married...
"What was her name?"
Sue.
"Yeah. And you loved her, right?"
Sure. But...
"She didn't love you?"
No. It was more complicated than that. Things...didn't work out.
"But you didn't meet my mom right away after that."
No. No, I...there were other women...
"But you didn't want to marry them?"
No. I liked some of them, but not...I didn't want to marry them. In fact, I had a woman living with me for awhile...
"Where?"
What do you mean, where? Here.
"But this place is so small."
Yeah.
"And there's just the one bed."
Yeah.
"Ohh...so you liked her liked her."
But that doesn't mean I wanted to marry her. I liked her. We got along, we did things. She even went to see Revenge Of The Sith with me.
"I thought you said girls didn't like Star Wars."
Well, she did. So yeah, I liked her. But I didn't love her. Or maybe I should say, I wasn't in love with her.
"But you were in love with my mom."
Yeah, well...
"You still are, aren't you?"
Isn't it getting kind of late? Shouldn't you be sleeping?
"Last night, I stayed up until two-thirty."
All the more reason you should go to sleep earlier tonight.
"So seriously, you wanted to marry my mom, right?"
Yeah, I think we've established that.
"What does established mean?"
Don't worry about it. Go to sleep.
"I have to tell you something first. You're not going to like it."
Yeah?
"I actually kind of liked Batman Forever."
