Another Reason to Watch PBS

Today Elias, Graham and I were sitting in the family room watching the movie Thunderbirds on TV. Actually, Elias was the only one watching the movie - I was watching Graham, and Graham was watching something on the ceiling.

Elias was happily chattering along with the movie - "Monorail!", "3-2-1, Blastoff! Blastoff!", "Rocket ship!" etc. During one of the commercial breaks, his carefree chatter was suddenly interrupted by a howl of dismay. I looked at him. His mouth was frozen into a exaggerated frown, his eyes were huge, and tears were running down his cheeks. He was repeating something over and over, it was nearly unintelligible but sounded like, "I didn't mean to crash into it. I'm sorry, I'm sorry"

At first I thought he had hurt himself, but the cries were low and guttural, not like his high-pitched pain cries, or even his phony tantrum cries. He was still staring at the TV, so I realized it must've been something he saw in one of the commercials. Luckily, we have TiVo, so I rewound through a couple of ads. One had elves in it (a la Tolkein, not Keebler), and he didn't seem too bothered by that. Neither did a Best Buy commercial phase him. But in the middle of a Pillsbury Toaster Strudel spot, he began sobbing with renewed despair. I rewound to the beginning of the commercial and watched as the Pillsbury Dough Boy was launched from a wooden spatula up into the air. He flew across a kitchen and crashed into a pile of pop tarts built up like a house of cards, knocking them down. Elias howled again upon impact.

My poor sensitive child. I rewound the commercial to the moment just before the house of pop tarts was destroyed and froze the image. "Look, Elias. They built it back up again, its ok!" He sniffed and looked unconvinced. But he seemed to momentarily forget his trauma, and before he noticed the Pillsbury Dough Boy suspended in mid-flight inches away from the pop tarts, I rewound the movie to a scene with a monorail car and lots of rocket ships.