The Kids' Dad and I dreamed up a clever little pro-divorce propaganda move to sway our children: the return of Family Fun Night. Dinner and a movie. Just the four of us. Just like old times. (Subtext: Divorce is good. Boundaries mean we can spend time together without fighting.)
Of course, Family Fun Night would have to be rebranded. Shake the old image and set the stage for a modern non-nuclear family. The Kids' Dad came up with the easy-to-type hard-to-say "FFN". Short for "Family Fun Night" or "Former Family Night" or any number of less polite monikers that we only mouth behind the kids' backs.
Dinner was a monstrous success for the boys, who both got to eat pancakes for dinner and compete in a Love Dog impersonation with their mom. We ate at a time and place that lumped us in with the terrifically quiet Early Bird crowd, all of whom gazed over their bifocals and relived false nostalgia for family values and quality time just by watching our little pseudo-nuclear family.
When deeper conversation might turn awkward, you stick to the neutral obvious. And so it was that, seated side by side in the dark of the theater, the Kids' Dad and I found ourselves divvying up the Coming Attractions. He made a rule ("It's going in the Parenting Agreement, " he demanded): I got to take the kids to any movies with talking animals and he got to take them to anything with guns.
G-Force: Me
G.I.Joe: Him
Where the Wild Things Are: Me
He claimed Percy Jackson and the Olympians, but I'm pretty sure I can amass evidence that minotaurs are talking animals...
And nobody wanted to touch Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs.
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