Well, that didn't work.

We went to see the Avengers movie on Sunday, finally.  I've been wanting to see it forever, it seems, ever since Thor came out.  I told my husband that he could not see it while he was in the Netherlands (it came out one week earlier in Europe) because I was going to see it with or without him when it came out here.  Well, maybe we'd have been better off doing that way.

Here's how our scenario unfolds.  Seth's days off are at the beginning of the week: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and alternate Wednesdays.  Have you ever tried to get a babysitter on one of those days?  In our circles, Sundays are family days, and Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday constitute school nights and will until the middle of June.  (Avengers is going to have a good, long run, but I wasn't confident that it would hold out until the middle of June.) And I've asked enough favors of my family friends for the time being.  So that leaves us with the option of taking the Boo to a movie that should be ostensibly way over her head.   We decided to go for my birthday.

Note to self: the surest way to spoil a movie for a grown-up is to bring a small kid to it. 

Now as far as kids and movies go, the Boo is a pretty good movie watcher.  She doesn't mind explosions or kissing or people falling over dead.  She runs away when the music gets intense, but we were prepared for that.  We put her through The Return of the Jedi one night, just to see if she could handle it (we figured that was as close as we could come to a comic book movie in our collection), and she sat through the whole thing with nary a whimper or nightmare.  We figured we were golden.  But there is one thing she minds.

Angry people.

In real life or on a screen, she will leave if someone's face gets an angry look on it.

Are you seeing a problem here?

And the Avengers has an angry person in it.  In fact, it has several angry people, an intense argument, and several close ups of a very large, angry, green person; a person who gets suddenly very angry and very large and very green.   No sooner did this person become  angry for the first time than the Boo turned to me and said, "Mommy, potty."  (Potty, for my non-parental readers, is the one excuse that no parents can afford to ignore, no matter how often their children use it as a ruse.  I ignored it once.  Let's just let it rest at that.)

I can't ignore the request to go potty, so out we go.  I led her briskly to the potties.  She went into the stall, shut me out (that's her new thing now), and went potty in the potty.  She let me back in to help her clean up, I reminded her to wash her hands, and then we headed back to the movie.

When we get back, Seth said, "You missed the best line."

"Why," I asked.  "What happened?"

"He said, his first name's not Phil.  It's agent." 

"Ha, that's pretty good." 

And the movie continued.  Half of the Avengers assembled.  The first confrontation with the villain happened.  Tension rose.  The action was getting good.  Somebody got angry.  "Mommy, potty."

Now it had only been fifteen minutes at the most, so I was a little skeptical, but, like I said, some things can't be ignored.  So I grabbed the backpack, and we headed back to the restrooms.  I was a little more impatient this time, especially since she was not in any hurry to sit down.  Instead she played with the toilet paper and fiddled with the garbage can.  I stood outside the stall, holding the door closed and trying not to get too waspish, but it was pretty obvious that she was stalling, and dagnabbit, I was missing the movie.  It was my birthday present, after all.  Finally, I barged in on her, sat her on the potty, and commanded her to go.  She did nothing for about a minute and then decided she's done.  She hopped down, dressed herself, insisted on washing her hands, and took her time prancing back into the theatre. 

I flopped  back down into my seat with a sigh, and my husband handed me the caramel corn with a sympathetic smile.  He took the Boo in his lap and tried to cuddle some courage into her while we watched, but she broke free and climbed back into my lap.  "No, Mommy."  She snagged my  theatre sized soda out of my armrest.  "Tirsty."  

Three potty breaks and two key plot moments later, I turned to him and said, "It's your turn." 

He's a good husband.  He took her and the backpack and did, well, whatever she needed.  I don't know what she needed.  I was watching the movie. 

In the end, I know that he took her out at least three times, and I did the same.  Sometimes she had to go.  Sometimes she just needed to get away from the movie.  She's really pretty quick; when she decides she's going to leave, she just leaves, and woe betide the parent that doesn't catch up. 

But finally, we reached the climax of the movie.  The Boo is hiding behind the chairs at our feet, but she's watching.  Seth and I are passing the popcorn back and forth, and the movie is awesome.  I take one last drink of my Sprite and realize that I just drank a movie theatre soda with a little help from my daughter.  And the second that my brain realizes this, my body realizes it too.  Dagnabbit!  It's not fair!  So I had to leave on my own account (and take the Boo with me, of course), and we missed another five minutes of excellent action film. 

So if you ask me how the Avengers was, I can tell you that it has everything a comic book movie should have: great lines, familiar archetypes with just enough twist to add pizazz, big explosions, a few tear jerking moments, a couple of surprises in just the right places, and of course, awesome superheroes doing awesome superhero type things.  I can't think of any enormous plot holes or character flaws that suspend the suspension of disbelief.  But if you ask me how it held together as a whole, well, I just can't tell you.   Between the Boo and myself, I missed about half an hour's worth of the movie. 

We should have just waited for it to come out on video. 

p.s.  In spite of her qualms, the Boo had no nightmares, and she hasn't been reinacting any of the scenes either.  That leaves me wondering how much she really digested.  Or maybe action movies just aren't her thing.