I should preface today's blog entry with the information that I am coming down off of a horrific migraine. It hit yesterday afternoon, with no aura beforehand, so I was totally unprepared. Normally, my vision starts doing funny things (that's the aura part) before I become sensitive to light, get nauseous, and then finally get hit with the mother of all headaches. The good news is that if I take Advil when I get the aura, I never develop the full-blown migraine headache. The bad news is that when I skip over the aura part, I'm too queasy to even consider taking Advil to try and lessen the pain.
Migraines do make me cranky, so I should, in theory, know better than to try and interact with the outside world while one is beating on a thousand invisible drums around my head. Note the words, "in theory," since I clearly do not know how to stay put and not inflict myself on others.
To make a long story even longer, I had to take the kidlets to the library to return a movie we had borrowed. It was due back today, and I did not want to forget to return it while struggling to function mid-migraine. While we were there, I picked up a schedule of the activities that are set up for kidlets during the next two months. I should have just left the schedule there and crawled back home to my darkened house and a hot pad for my head.
At home, I sat down to try and figure out what activities would work for any, if not all three, of my kidlets. I was surprised to see "The Goonies Movie" written on one of the dates. I was even more surprised to see "Ages 3+" written underneath that. Now, I love The Goonies. God only knows how many times I have watched that delightful '80s flick. However, it is a PG movie, there is a fair amount of swearing, and the level of violence (or implied violence) is definitely not advisable for young kidlets.
To err on the side of caution before calling the library, since I honestly thought they had perhaps meant to write "Ages 13+," I double-checked with commonsensemedia.org. (I love that website, by the way. It tells parents, or whoever uses it, about movies and other media, and gives a recommended age range so you have a general idea whether or not something will work for your family.) Sure enough, http://www.commonsensemedia.org/movie-reviews/the-goonies had it rated as good for ages ten and up. That matched up with what I already knew about The Goonies, so I went ahead and gave the library a call.
Imagine my chagrin when I spoke with someone who informed me, rather tersely in my opinion, that their age rating was simply because a child needed to be able to sit through a movie all by themselves in order to watch it, and that it was up to the parents to do their own dang research (okay, I'm paraphrasing that part) to see if it is okay for their offspring. I think you could have scraped my chin up off the floor.
Correct me if I am wrong, but if I see "Ages 3+," I am expecting the selection to be appropriate for children ages three and up. I do not expect to see a PG movie, which means parental guidance is required, and one that I know personally freaked me out the first time I saw it as a tween. To say I am disappointed that someone on the library staff would say a movie like that is fine for any child old enough to sit by themselves is absurd.
I promptly threw this summer's library schedule into our recycling bin. Darned if I am going to take my offspring to anything that they have set up for a particular age group. I don't trust their age ranges any farther than I could throw the library building. To say I am disappointed is an understatement. At least the Advil started working. To bad they don't have a pill for common sense.
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