We’re Spartacus!

I turned on the TV yesterday afternoon to Spartacus in-progress on TCM.

I recognized I had tuned in just a couple of scenes before the “I’m Spartacus” moment, where all the rebelling slaves claim to be their leader, the man named Spartacus, to save him from dying alone at the hands of the Romans. It’s a magnificent movie moment, courtesy of writer Dalton Trumbo—breaking Hollywood’s infamous Black List by penning the screenplay under his own name—director Stanley Kubrick and actor/producer Kirk Douglas.

If anybody ever asks you who broke the Black List in Hollywood, point to a picture of Douglas and say, “That’s Spartacus.”

But I digress. I called for The Boy, who was playing in the next room. He came in and we watched the rest of the movie together, from “I’m Spartacus” (below) to the crucified rebel leader watching his wife and newborn son flee Rome with citizenship papers in hand, his mission accomplished even as he lay dying.

I don’t know. What is the right age to let your kid see images of the Apian Way lined with crucifixes on either side of the road as far as the eye can see? I took a chance on almost-six. If we were a proper Catholic household, the sight of a dying man nailed to a tree would have become commonplace long before now.

The Boy seemed to take it all relatively in stride, although it initially took some convincing to get him to believe this was something people actually used to do to each other.

I spent the rest of the night trying to teach him to say, “I’m Spartacus!” on demand.

He starts his last week of preschool today, then I have him at home for three weeks, then he’s gone, man. Into the system.

Kindergarten. At a school where all the K-8 kids mingle with each other on the playground during recess.

I want to send him in there accompanied by a detachment of Blackwater goons.

I worry that because of his 95th percentile height, he’s going to be mistaken for a kid much older than he is. I’ve seen it happen in parks and pools for the last couple years. A kid about The Boy’s size will come up and want to play with him, and I eventually have to explain to the ten-year-old that The Boy is actually only five, not “special.”

He’s gonna learn to have to do his own talking pretty soon. But something happened last night to make me think he may just be up to the challenge.

I was trying to put him to bed so The Missus and I could watch Breaking Bad with a clear conscience. The night before had been a disaster. He had refused all entreaties to cooperate with the getting-ready-for-bed process and I eventually ended up literally dragging him kicking and screaming to the bathroom. Much drama ensued, much gnashing of teeth of shedding of tears, and apparently the shenanigans continued with his mother long after I went to bed.

I was determined tonight would be different. Better.

I went into his room about 7:30 and we played war games with little plastic effigies of an airline passenger jet and the China Clipper for a while. About ten to eight, I said, “Hey, you know what time it is.” He glanced at the big, old-fashioned round schoolhouse wall clock and said pointedly, “I know.”

I taught him how to read that clock. It’ll be obsolete before he gets his learners’ permit.

Knowing one of his favorite tricks is to demand to be fed after the evening tooth-brushing has occurred, I suggested we hit the kitchen for a treat before bed-time.

He took his treat and retired to the front room coach. His body language was hollering in all caps, “I expect to be here for awhile.”

Treat finished, I told him, “Let’s go. Time to get ready for bed.”

“Noooo…” he sulked.

I explained again how much Mommy and Daddy needed to watch Breaking Bad, but how irresponsible it would be for us to let him see it, because of the potential for graphic violence. (This after Spartacus.)

He said he didn’t want to go to bed. He swore up and down he wasn’t tired.

I decided to outlast him by being tediously logical and unflappable and boring. I said, Okay, what do you want to do instead? Knowing from past experience that he can usually be counted upon to fold under direct, specific questioning.

Instead, he said, I want to talk.

And stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t have a prepared answer because this is a card he had never played before. It was a masterstroke and I told him so. I told him I hadn’t been prepared to accept any answer he had to give me, but he had come up with one I couldn’t refuse. High-five.

So, I said, what do you want to talk about?

He said he didn’t have any idea.

I said, Look, you called this conversation. It’s up to you to get it going. Now, what do you want to talk about? You want to talk about you?

He said Yeah.

I bore in: What about you do you want to talk about? Your hair? Your nose? Your arm?

He said Okay.

I asked him, Do you think that’s going to be a very interesting conversation to me?

He said No.

I said, How about if we talk about my hair, my nose, my arm? Is that going to be a very interesting conversation to you?

Again, he admitted, not so much.

So I said, What we need to talk about is something we’re both interested in. Like superheroes, or Mommy, or our big dumb pooch Jake…

Superheroes, he said!

And I don’t honestly remember how we got from that, to discussing the concept of unlimited alternate realties, other than that he brought it up. It’s a central conceit in one of his favorite not-for-kids cartoon superhero DVDs. We’ve watched it maybe eight or ten times, every time but the first time at his request.

He was talking about all the different earths and I stopped him and asked, did he understand where all those different earths came from?

He admitted he did not.

I explained it was a popular theory that every time we made a choice, we created another world where we had made the opposite choice. Seizing the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone (really wanted to get to Breaking Bad), I used the example of the going-to-bed fracas of the night before. I said, Remember last night, when you were bad, and we had that big fight and everybody ended up sad?

He said that he did.

I said, Well, when you made that choice, you created two worlds: ours, where you disobeyed and everybody went to bed sad, and another where you behaved and everybody went to bed happy. Then I took my clasped hands and spread them apart and said, Do you see how making that choice created two worlds?

He nodded, looking somewhat chagrined.

Then I thought about it for a second and said, And there was another choice made last night. I made the choice to drag you to the bathroom which made you really mad, then we all got sad; if I had made a different choice, and been just a little more patient with you instead of forcing compliance, none of us would have gone to bed sad, either. I spread my hands again to illustrate. One choice, two more different worlds.

Then what could I do? I apologized. I explained that I, too, should have made a different choice last night. We both had a shot at making a better world and we both let it slip through our fingers.

We agreed to make better choices going forward and try to make sure that every world we split off into is the best one it can possibly be.

Then I accompanied my 5-year-old future astrophysicist to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, helped him change him into his PJs and packed him off to bed to be read to sleep by his Mommy.

And nobody cried, and no unnecessary drama was had, and every choice we made that night did indeed lead to the best-possible-world scenario, as far as I can tell. I wouldn’t have changed anything.

Who’s Spartacus? When we make the right choices, we can all be, and live to tell the tale.