I wish I could do deep meaningful shit with my kids all the time. I do. I wish that.

But I can’t.

I wish when we spent special time together it was to knit and garden, sew pants out of upcycled wool, build things out of repurposed tires, visit abstract art museums. Paint, dance, frolic.

But I can’t.

I mean I CAN. Physically, I can.

But I can’t. Mentally. Ya feel me here?

Sometimes, I just need to pay money and do something easy with the kid – a guaranteed win. An outing that’s an “in the bag” kid pleaser with very little work on my part.

You know, like going to the movie theater to watch Transformers with your 5-year-old son, after purchasing on his behalf a large, buttered popcorn, one Sprite, one package of regular M&Ms and one package of Sour Patch Kids.

So it’s a PG-13 movie.

So it cost $40.00 we really didn’t have.

So he ate enough preservatives, sugar, additives and chemicals of unknown origin to destroy a few million brain cells.

So we didn’t really talk. Or learn anything of any use AT ALL (except, perhaps, that hot women can run full speed through a burning Chicago, dodging falling buildings and Decepticons, while wearing 3-inch spiked heels! Okay, seriously people, I gotta write a blog post about the way women are depicted in those damn action films. I’m vomiting a little just thinking about it.).

So it wasn’t deep or profound or particularly meaningful.

And I felt a little guilty that our special date together – our just he & I time – was a few hours sitting in a theater, watching large metal machines beat the shit out of each other and long-haired women with big lips dodge bullets and squeal.

But there was no preparation. No thought. No arguments. No cajoling. No disappointment when the child in question gets distracted after 10 minutes – more interested in gluing his finger to the table than furthering the objective of the well-thought-out, Waldorf-life craft project.

So it was perfect.

And halfway through the movie he crawled on my lap. And he sat on my lap the whole time. And I smelled his head and kissed his cheek and rubbed his bony little arms. And I watched him laugh when they laughed and get nervous during the fight scenes because you never know – this could be the first time the good guy loses…

And in the car we talked about who’s better: Optimus Prime or Bumblebee, and he reenacted the fight scenes and I realized I finally know the Transformers’ names like his daddy does, and he finally got an hour of uninterrupted mom-lap time.

And I gotta say, the whole thing blew wool-felting right outta the fucking water.

Well, yes. It was a really crap movie. Like bad.