When Kids Let You Down

Now, to ease the awfulness of what you just read:

This past Friday, a friend and I took her eldest boy and his best friend to
see a community-theater production of The Nutcracker (which wasn't without
its charm). The main reason we went is that I'd heard young children
watch it with a particular sense of wonder, and eldest boy (barely six
now) seems on the edge of young-childhood. Well, in this case, at least,
he's over the edge of young-childhood: he and best friend were both eager
to go, but when we'd taken our seats and were looking at the program, they
spied two pictures of ballerinas and cried, "Aaauuuugggghh! Look! Punch
it, punch it!" and started pounding on the program. My friend and I looked at
each other with raised eyebrows, and then it sort of turned into that
scene in that one Simpsons ep. wherein Homer has bought tickets to the
ballet and only later realizes that ballet is not the thing with the
clowns and trained animals. Eldest boy was all attention up through the fight
between the mouse and nutcracker armies, but immediately afterward he
launched into squirming and Al Gore-worthy sighing followed by several
repetitions, in increasing volume, of the words "It's HORRIBLE." I was
disappointed because I've long thought that my friend doesn't give him enough
credit, and here he was being just a normal stupid kid. (At the beginning
of the second act, when the Spanish and Russian and Chinese and all the
other dancers make an introductory appearance en masse, he complained
because they were all girls.) I don't much care for normal stupid
kid-ness, especially in boys (girls I do tend to be more patient with, out
of sympathy for what they're in for as they get older).