Oh, Shirt!

If I had to choose, I would say The Blues Brothers is probably my favorite movie. I can't decide if that makes me a dork, shallow or really cool.

So the other night when Charlie was up past 11:00 and wasn't falling asleep, I saw that it was on TV and decided to let him watch it. I planned to rope him in with the police car chases and music (2 of his favorite things) and then figured it would bore him to sleep when they switched to less exciting dialogue. I figured right about him loving the movie and wrong about it eventually boring him to sleep.

I also figured that the swear words would be removed since it was on TV. I guess the rules have changed since I was a kid. We've seen the movie enough that Seth and I managed to talk loudly over the TV whenever a swear word was coming. And we only missed one - the one when the driver of the Good Ol' Boys' RV says "Oh, S***!" right before driving into a lake.

We kind of held our breaths, hoping that if we didn't react, he wouldn't even notice it. About a minute later, just when we thought we were in the clear, Charlie said in a completely innocent voice, "I like the way that guy said, 'Oh S***!'"

Seth was on it quicker than I was and said, "He said 'Oh Shirt!'" Charlie was a little skeptical at first, "He said, 'Oh Shirt'?......Why did he say 'Shirt'?"
Then it was my turn to cover by telling him there was a shirt lying in the road, and that's what made him drive off into the lake.  That seemed to satisfy his young and trusting mind, which could never imagine his parents would tell him anything untrue.

Seth was hesitant to even have this posted on the blog: exposing our kid to profanities and blatantly lying to him all in one night. Pretty sure we're not in the running for Parents of the Year Award. I thought the story was too good to let it get lost to our undependable memories, though.

He has reenacted many things from the movie, but it has been a few months now and he has not once used the phrase "Oh Shirt!" or anything similar. Here he is chasing bad guys around the kitchen island. I love how he even whips the back end of his "car" whenever he turns a corner like they do in the movies. Unfortunately for Charlie, this activity was ruining our floors so we had to put an end to his car chases. Hardwood floors and kids just don't mix that well...

And here he is listening to his new favorite CD while dancing on his tiny "stage."  I'm pretty sure some of those moves are straight from the movie. For the first 2 weeks after getting this CD, if anyone dared to play anything other than the  Blues Brothers Soundtrack, Charlie would stop whatever he was doing, yell "Noooooo!!!" and run to the CD player to switch it back. I'm glad to report he has gotten over that and we are once again allowed to play a variety of music.