Teenage Angst for Younger Children: The Movie

Technically, Ian had heard the term suspension before, but he didn't know what it meant until we discussed it tonight, in the context of a movie.

The boys insisted that I watch a made-for-cable-TV Disney movie entitled "Lemonade Mouth." They already saw the movie earlier today, and it was sufficiently important for Daddy to see it that they would complain if I got up for a moment to go to the kitchen, and they would jump to take care of little tasks that Amy asked me to do, like gather up dirty dishes from supper, so that I wouldn't miss this most excellent film.  And when I would leave the room, even briefly, they would pause the film for me, lest I miss a moment of it.

So "Lemonade Mouth" is about a motley gang of California high school kids who meet in detention and form a subversive rock group dedicated, among other things, to getting evil Principal Brenigan to scrap his imminent plans to remove the lemonade vending machine from the basement of the school. The Evil Irish-American Principal is having none of their radical ravings, and tells them that, if they keep it up, he'll disband them and if they so much as hum, they'll face suspension.

At that heart-rending moment of crisis in the movie, Madeleine asked, "What's suspension."

I answered:  "To tell someone that they can't come to school for awhile  - as a punishment."  That last phrase was added to provide the essential psychological import of the threat, because it occurred to me that the children might not understand that suspension is bad unless I emphasized that point.

And right on queue, when I said, "As a punishment," Amy burst into laughter, and Ian piped up, nearly at the same moment:

"Well that's not much of a punishment

(June 26, 2013)