Creepy Things

There's a whole 'nother world out there you just don't get to see until you live with a toddler.

For example: I had never seen the movie "Stuart Little" until the other night when Mojo and I were looking for something to entertain the Peeper while he settled down towards bedtime.

Our options were limited, and we simply found this little item while channel-surfing and happened into the middle of some sort of boat race where the mouse/younger brother sails the big brother's toy boat. Peep liked the boats, so we watched for ten minutes or so.

Okay - so I have to admit; I've always had sort of a thing for Geena Davis. Her movie characters always seem so sexy-smart and clever in a sort of mojolicious way. But the more I thought about the whole Stuart Little thing the more creepy it seemed.

I remember vaguely reading the E.B' White book that this farrago is based on and not being particularly skeeved out about the idea of a mouse kid born to a human couple.

Maybe it was just my age (too young to get the sexual implications) or maybe it was just the matter-of-fact tone of the book. As I recall the book stressed that Stuart WAS a little boy that just LOOKED like a mouse. But somehow the whole business seemed so much more...skweechy...when I was looking at Geena's larger-than-life face on the screen and thinking; okay, one of her kids is a mouse. She gave birth to a human child...and then a mouse. Interspecies reproduction.

Eeeeewww.

But wait - I read that the movie sidesteps this by making Stuart an adopted child.

Somehow I'm not sure that this is better. Is this saying that your adoptive kid is, like, a rodent only sorta not? And that somewhere, somehow a mouse got caught up in the human abandoned child system? That Geena and Bertie (her husband is played by the guy - Hugh Laurie - who did Bertie Wooster in the wonderful PBS series) adopted a mouse, not as a pet, but as a child?

I'm SO not sure what this means except it makes me go "hmmmm..."

From what little I saw of "Stuart Little" it seemed like a bright, colorful, cheerful kids movie - except...except...

How do you explain to a toddler that his adoptive sister will never look like a cute little mouse?