First times

There's a nice page on the RadioBDC blog site on which staff members recall their first concerts. Some of them happened to attend relatively momentous shows - Bowie in the mid-1970s, Pearl Jam shortly after the death of Kurt Cobain - while others had slightly less dramatic experiences. Mark Lewis, for instance, recalls being taken to a Billy Joel concert at Madison Square Garden in 1982 - and falling asleep, midway through the fifth song. The Piano Man can be compelling, but so can a nap.

Given that, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I took Cleo to her first full-length feature film yesterday: Monsters University, a prequel to the wonderful 2001 Pixar film Monsters Inc. We've been watching 25-minute segments of the latter on DVD over the last few weeks, and as Cleo has come to know the world of Sully and Mike she's also come to understand the concept of sarcasm ("Why does Mike say 'Great plan' when they are put into the ice world??), the cynical deceitfulness of Randall, and the retro appeal of Roz. But, still: how would she come to terms with a full 1:45 of new material? Could she stay awake, in a dark theater? And would she really tell me if she needed to go to the bathroom?

The answers turned out to be, in order: Well; yes; not quite. In the cool of the air conditioning, she sat in my lap for the whole film, making it through six previews and a short film before taking in the pleasant but hardly transcendent feature attraction. I tried to clear up a few of the plot complexities during quieter moments, but the storyline was generally clean and accessible, and Cleo confidently demonstrated, in an inappropriately loud voice, that she was on top of the other details ("They're sitting," she correctly announced to the nearly empty theater at one point, "on a bunk bed"). I asked her a few times if she wanted to stay, and the answer was always a focused yes. And when we left the theater afterwards, chatting about the film, it was clear that she'd understood much of it, even if the references to fraternity hazings were aimed more at me than at her.

But the first thing that Cleo said after her first film was in fact less directly related to the plot. It was: "I'm a little wet." And she was: just a touch, as the result of a minor lapse in bladder control that might be seen as a testament to the film's appeal more than anything else. Some find the memory of spectacle indelible; some fall asleep. And some forget about slight pressures. But the first time out is often, in various senses, absorbing.