… Jurassic Park!  The Art of Rubbish Parenting.

“Daddy.  How much do you love me?”

“Ten out of ten!”

“How many out of a million?”

“Well, it’s improbable that I should love you ten out of ten to six decimal places.  So maybe about nine-hundred and ninety nin…”

I see the tears start to well up.

“A million and six!”

Yes, as we’ve established before I am a rubbish parent, but I am making up for that. 

The boy and I are going to the cinema to see Jurassic Park.

Actual Jurassic Park. 30^th Anniversary Showing.  On the big screen.  With dinosaurs!

Now, please don’t think this represents some terrible misogyny in the Dr Brown household.  The girl had been invited, but didn’t wish to spend an evening with her father, her little brother, or velociraptors. In no particular order.

If anything we take gender stereotyping to the opposite extreme.  I cite as an example the occasion when Professor Mrs Dr Brown interrupted me sewing a badge on the boy’s cub jumper to tell me she would want her tea on the table at seven because she had to take a call from the House of Lords.

The Brown family are not natural movie buffs but we love a quiz…

What Steven Spielberg film contains the line “You’re going to need a bigger boat”?

The kids, enthusiastically and in unison: “Titanic!”

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wB3g967rFLs
(contains one rude word and a massive shark: 12 certificate film)

Anyway, the boy and I found ourselves in the cinema on Saturday night, enjoying our nine quid bag of minstrels, pleasingly surrounded by other 40-something dads who, like me, had seen it first time around and were back with our kids (somehow life had found a way for us to reproduce, against all the odds!) for another tour round our dinosaur-infested childhood memories.  All the dads with a little fleck of desperation in our smiles, hoping it hadn’t dated too badly and longing for our kids to enjoy it.

And they loved it!

Now, I say I watched Jurassic Park with the boy.  What I actually did was spend two hours watching the boy watching Jurassic Park.

And I loved that.

“That was the scaredest I’ve ever been!” He announced on leaving.  But with a grin.  Not scared like before extensive dental work but scared like a kid who’d just spent two hours in the most amazing theme park in the world.

Scaredness that I probably didn’t help massively with. 

In fairness on a scale of nought-to-inevitable how likely do you think it ever was that I wouldn’t pretend to be a velociraptor in the empty multistorey car park on the way out?

We made up for it with the song, though.

You don’t know the song?

We spent most of the trip home singing the theme to the tune of the Jurrasic Park theme

“In Jur-a-ssic Park

There are din-o-saurs

They will eeeeeat

You forrrrrr

Their dinn-er!”

John Williams

Go on – you know you want to!

And that was it.

One of my greatest parenting moments.  Because , as the boy fell asleep against me that evening and John Williams’ twinkling piano theme started up: like Stephen Spielberg, and Dr Alan Grant before me, I’d successfully guided a ten year old boy through Jurassic Park.

Post script – If you have an hour this is my current favourite podcast. Worth a listen for the seatbelt fact alone. https://play.acast.com/s/comfort-blanket/jurassic-park-with-tom-neenan.

If you have two hours – re-watch Jurassic Park.