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What were my parents thinking? || Childhood Autonomy and Child's Play 3

I have the most vivid memories of seemingly useless points in my childhood. To this day, I often wonder what made them stick in my mind so clearly. Years ago, I would have called it “trauma”, but today I would call it “moments of unwarranted autonomy”. Children are often given time to themselves, unsupervised, that ultimately go unquestioned by their parents. In 1991, I was almost 6 years old when the film Child’s Play 3 released in theaters. It was still quite warm out, late august, and school had or was about to start. I lived in a sleepy neighborhood in Texas among a block of starter homes for young families built just the other side of a major thoroughfare, with next to nothing interesting on our side of the tracks. On the other side of the road was a sprawling, lively sub-division from the late 70’s that housed the girth of the families in the area. Because of that, there were very few children on my side of the road, but we were close with our neighbors. So much so that I could walk out our door and right through theirs without saying a word. (I would later find out that my walking into people’s homes was… less than desired, but reluctantly acceptable. The kind of thing you learn from context. “Did you know your son just walks right on in, like he’s family. He didn’t even care that I was on the toilet…”) This is precisely how I walked out of my house and right into Child’s Play 3 at a theater near me.

As was my custom, I had wandered from my house down to one of the few neighbors with kids my age. They were a large Latinx family, only the children spoke any english, and I managed to always find my way into their house at dinner time. After some back and forth, and maybe a plate or two whatever they had left (I was very chonk back then), I was told they were all headed to the movies. I took this to mean I was invited, ran home, yelled into the house, and jumped into their van. Now, rightly, the title makes it seem like my parents had some idea what I was about to go see, or that they were given a chance to parent me, but the way I see it, they set this behavior as the norm. And really, this was only the beginning of a series of questionable parent/child entanglements that made up my 18 years with my parents.

There would be more chances for them to intervene in my shenanigans, but they remained unsavvy, willfully ignorant or otherwise. I can still recall inappropriate movie rentals that made for ill-advised sleepover screenings, the kind of nights other kid’s parents call and rebuke you over. I can’t really be sure their parents ever called. It could have been that my friend’s parents were just as informed as my own, or that my friends knew to keep their mouths shut. Having spent the night at some of their houses, places of rules and caffeine-free, sugar-free sodas, the latter was more likely. My parents were the kind of people you could tell the truth and they would believe you were lying, lie and believe it the truth.

Back in the van, we drove just past the dead end of the highway and pulled into a large parking lot across from an empty shopping center. The only action that night was a group of teens playing outside an old, well lit Taco Bell. I think I saw one of them throw a burrito at the others. We parked outside a squat, one story building and quickly made our way past the ushers. The movie theater was one of those older, cheaper venues with sticky floors, broken seats, and the coldest a/c known to man. It didn’t look like it was ever a happening spot, but it had the latest flicks. We sat down just in time for the previews, which was when I was starting to realize I might not like the movie we were about to see. Now, this is where my memory gets a bit fuzzy, as I only remember feeling a kind of creeping dread as the coming attractions hit the screen, but after some research I assume that the trailers were for films like The People Under The Stairs, Highlander 2, Cape Fear, and The Addams Family. At the time, I thought the Land Before Time was scary. Be kind. And then, Child’s Play 3 started.

The opening moments of the film drew my little hands to my chubby face, watching between my fingers as a melted doll is shown being re-animated in reverse with the same care and cadence of a Velveeta commercial, both lacked an appetizing appeal. I looked to my friends sitting next to me, all of them wide-eyed and beaming. I couldn’t reconcile that we were seeing the same thing. I couldn’t even eat the bits of candy we snuck in, not that I would have eaten twizzlers anyway, but I liked to pretend I enjoyed it. I turned back to the screen as the film continued, Chucky terrorizing the Good Guy dolls CEO with a series of Home Alone tricks, that did get me laughing, but instead of comical minor injuries, the man ends up dead. I couldn’t help but think of my own toys getting back at me for letting Donatello beat Batman in a battle royale on my dresser. The film changes focus to a military school, where the troubled Andy of the first two films has enrolled due to his trauma in the fallout of his encounters with Chucky. Finding his way to the school, Chucky ingratiates himself with a little black kid named Tyler, but not before pulling a huge knife on him. I immediately identified with Tyler and decided in that moment that I had reached my limit. As an only child, my toys were my friends, my outlet, my confidants, and while I always wanted them to talk, I decidedly didn’t want them to talk like Chucky. It was at this point that I remembered that some of the family did not follow us into the Child’s Play. Without saying anything to my cohorts, I walked out of the theater to look for them, hoping they were seeing something I could stomach. As it would turn out, they were. The film had waves crashing against the shore, calming me with every lap. Again, I had to do a bit of research to figure out what film that would have been. It seems to have been Return to the Blue Lagoon, a horrendous flop starring Milla Jovavich. At this point, I don’t remember much, but I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I knew, I was ushered to the lobby by some staff after the lights went up. The family had been waiting for me, but they didn’t look concerned.

Without incident, question, or consequence, we piled into the van and headed home. The Taco Bell was dark and closed. There were no kids throwing burritos anymore, and the streets were empty. My memory fades here. Maybe I fell asleep, maybe they carried me home. What I remember most is that no one made fun of me for leaving, but no one asked why I left either. My parents didn’t ask about the movie and as far as I know, they didn’t speak to the neighbors about it. As a child, I lived with a lot of autonomy. I didn’t need consent from my parents. I moved past barriers other kids experienced with ease. I don’t think it was because my parents didn’t care, but maybe because they didn’t know they should care. The children’s stories I loved were often about acquired autonomy, accepting adventure with reckless abandon. In hindsight, as I yearned to be these free, heedless children from my storybooks, it turns out that’s exactly what I already was. The only difference was that, instead of being a boy who pulled a sword from a stone, I pulled a key from my pocket. I was merely a latchkey kid living and thriving in a quiet suburb in Texas. To this day, people are always surprised by the freedoms I was given, especially with every passing year. I have a different kind of confidence in myself because of it, and it also transforms into a certain amount of social currency with acquaintances whom I bore to death with stories of my past. So, at the very least, I can always thank my parents for that.

#Film #Review #Childs Play #Childs Play 3 #Chucky #The People Under The Stairs #Poltergeist #Highlander #Highlander 2 #Addams Family #The Addams Family #Cape Fear #Childhood #Family #The Land Before Time #Sharptooth #T-Rex #Tyranosaurusrex #Littlefoot

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