The train continues ...

Last night we had a family DVD session and Mark picked the Disney classic "Peter Pan" for our viewing pleasure. Sam's been watching it often and does some pretty good renditions of bits with voices and actions all straight from the film. Mark's heard his impressions, but never having seen the film he had no frame with which to reference "What ever shall we do?" ... and so on.

Throughout the movie, Mark asked questions and made comments:

They had a dog as a babysitter?

Did those parents just lock their kids in the house and leave?

Peter Pan was really just a nasty kid.

Tinkerbell is dressed pretty scantily. What's that about?

... and more like that.

While he's experiencing the whole Peter Pan gig for the first time, I'm wondering if the Mary Martin version has been preserved.

I can recall so clearly how impressed, how moved, how involved I was watching that on TV sometime in the '50s. I remember clapping my hands until they hurt in efforts to rouse Tink, and wishing for just a bit of her dust as I knew I'd have no problem conjuring the good thought needed for flight. Hook scared the bejeezus out of me, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if some day under hypnosis I learn that my disinterest with reptiles has everything to do with the tick-tock-croc.

The world Sam and Cj live in has much smaller gaps between experiences. Here we are on the same island where Mark spent his childhood catching crabs, yet it could be a different planet. Right now, their entertainment is as varied as the DVDs we bring home which could have them watching the same things as kids on 48th Street in Sacramento are glued to. Someday in the not-too-distant future, we'll have more than the one TV station we get now, everything under the sun will be beaming into our living room, and Cj will learn to flick a remote control from channel to channel as rapidly and with as much disinterest as any American rugrat.

Sam is already familiar with many things kids in other parts of the world know, even to the point of singing along with SpongeBob. Cj's started out with Baby Einstein and Elmo, so would be right there in a toddlers' round of Trivial Pursuit.

Yep. Even on this little island in the middle of the Indian Ocean life is getting more and more like it is everywhere.

I'm a quivering mound of ambivalence. Is this a good thing? Is it sad that the world is now so small? Have we lost something special about island life? Will it make my kids' future easier being less different and having many of the same cultural references?

I'm still not done with this long train of thought, so there will be more in the next post.