There’s no joy like watching my wild child, now an adult, struggle with his own wild child.

“Was I really like this?” he’ll ask. To which I quickly reply, “No. Much worse.”

But I wasn’t prepared for the moment when what goes around comes around came around to me.

Like most 30-somethings raising kids, I had my mother-in-law stories. A personal favorite was about the time she took our preteen sons to see – gasp – The Blue Lagoon.

“What was she thinking?” I asked anyone who would listen. After all, here were Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkins enjoying “love as it was intended to be” – au naturale– on a tropical island.

Never would I do such a thing, I vowed, as I hauled the boys to every available version of 101 Dalmations.

            In that same spirit – or so I thought – I hauled my five-year-old grandson last week to see Dog Days. After all, he loves dogs, and the pups on the movie poster were aw, so cute.

After 20 minutes of rip-roaring previews like PG-13 Ant Man and the Wasp (“Wow, I wanna see that one!”) and Bumblebee (“See ‘im. See ‘im. He’s a giant BEE!”), I congratulated myself on a more redemptive choice – a rom-com that celebrates rescuing strays.

But it wasn’t five minutes before I had my own Blue Lagoon moment. An adorable fluffy pup trotted out of the back bedroom with a red lace bra in his mouth – the first clue that star Nina Dobrev’s character has a cheating boyfriend in the back bedroom.

“I don’t think this is such a great movie,” I whispered, suddenly noticing that I was the only one who’d brought a child.

Quick exit to switch tickets to the later-starting Christopher Robin. Safe enough, I was sure.

“Let’s play games first!” proposed my charge, pulling me toward the arcade. Remembering the last 20 minutes of high-testosterone previews, I agreed, which led to two dollars worth of tranquilizing dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, which he was disturbingly good at.

Eager to move to more tranquil space, I insisted we get to Christopher Robin, which in the first few minutes moved from a delightful tea party in the woods to Christopher’s father’s funeral and an explosive World War II scene – all the while flipping through book pages he could not yet read.

“I don’t think this is such a great movie,” he whispered. And we exited again.

I try to learn something from my fiascos, and from this one I learned there’s a web page (commonsensemedia.org) that rates the heck out of these movies. But even that is not foolproof. Dumbo seemed to come out OK, and my daughter-in-law told me the story is way too sad. Some days, you just do the best you can.

On this particular day, we had better luck going home and constructing a 48-piece floor puzzle of a pterodactyl from a consignment store, playing a memory game and agreeing that when we played Go Fish, he could make up the rules as he went along. It should be great training for being a grandfather.

As for my late mother-in-law, I think I’ll finally forgive her.

Copyright 2018 Pat Snyder