Dear British Parents, From Another British Parent

So...Easter has just been, even though it's Easter Monday and the Christians of the world are still celebrating and awaiting the return of Jesus Christ while dealing with the fact their children's sore stomachs from all the chocolate and minted lamb.

...Oh! Animals! Look at that. This is going somewhere  I promise. Namely...here.

Channel Five showed Watership Down and it didn't go well.

The link above (which leads to the article posted by British newspaper The Mirror) talks about the anger and disgust of parents who allowed their presumably quite small children to watch a movie about cute little bunny rabbits because Easter...who go through the rabbit version of a slaughter, basically. I...can't get my head around this. At all. It's...no, you know what? No, I can't go there.

It's not the fact kids got scared by the film. It scared the pants off me when I was a kid and it probably still does now. Kids get scared all the time by movies, it's just something that happens. Kids don't want to see other living creatures, real or otherwise, get shot and whatever else. It's understandable. It's also understandable that parents want to protect their children. I have a three-year-old, you're right I want to protect him, and as a parent you're an idiot if you don't think I won't do everything in my power to keep him safe. Safe. Safe. SAFE. Key word there. I will protect my son from harm, but I'm not going to pretend that bad things happen and complain when a choice I make upsets him, and especially not to a person that has no control over what is shown...who works for a business that you don't have to take anything to do with.

Did Watership Down turn into nightmare fuel for your little one? Yes? Well you know what you should have done when they started showing signs of being upset? Here are a couple of suggestions:

1) Pick up the television remote (you know, the thing that looks a little bit like a rectangle and has loads of buttons on it?)

2) Changed the channel or turned off your television

3) Cuddled your child, dried their eyes and...

4) Explain in an age-appropriate manner the material that upset them.

5) Do not, under any circumstances, take to social media and tell a television channel that you did not have to watch that they were showing something you did not have to watch

Unless of course someone had entered your home and a statistically unlikely series of events occurred that results in either watching this movie or atrocities happening to you and yours. With this still in mind however, number 5 is still not a thing. You are not contractually obliged by any television provider and their online counterpart under the sun to watch anything they broadcast.

Do you know what the most...upsetting/annoying thing about this whole malarkey is? Watership Down was written (yes, it's a book. Marketed as a children's book at that) in the 1970s, published in 1972, and the movie parents are complaining about was released in 1978. Now the law of averages says that most of these parents are what...twenties and thirties? (Teen parents and older parents do skew this average a little, however) I find it very unlikely that these parents have never in their lives at the very least heard of Watership Down. However, this is not the 1970s but the age of Google, Wikipedia and IMDB [Internet Movie Database], which allows people who may be unfamiliar to do something that their parents would not have been able to do; research. I'm not going to say I'm perfect and know what everything my boy will ever watch is about...but I would like to consider myself perhaps more knowledgeable than as to let him get scared and then complain to the powers that be as if my decision is somehow their fault. I, too, become scared. Regularly. However, unless it can be shown that it is not my doing that I became scared, it was very likely my own fault and not that of someone else. Unless my parents or fiancé attempt to bring me up high and make me look down…that’s definitely their fault.

Even better than this is the assumption that because it was shown before 9pm, or is labelled as a kids' movie, it's going to be all sunshine and roses. I must ask, in what universe? I'm not that person that every parent hates, telling you how to parent while not having a damn clue, I've just told my three-year-old to stop dragging a plastic spoon across the floor. I'm that one you don't like because I refuse to protect you from your own mistakes. Kids films are scary sometimes [Read: a lot. Thank you, Disney]. They have scenes that are most definitely not suitable for children. Like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnamFerzNvw

That's Pinocchio. Film scares me more than a “family” movie should, to the point where I have told my son’s father that if he wants to show this to our son, he’s on his own. This scene in particular scares me. It is one of two Disney movies I steadfastly refuse to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_MVU7NQkGE

This is Aladdin, where a guy gets swallowed whole by a freaking sand-cave monster thing. That's not necessarily kid appropriate viewing, and that's in the first five minutes of the film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1VvWAVg9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKlr_dE7u9U

The first video is a Top Ten Disney Villain Deaths. The second one is a Top Ten Scariest Disney moments, both originally posted by WatchMojo.com. These videos scratch the surface. I can promise you that any children's film you watch will have dark and scary moments in it, purely because you cannot make a full-length movie of someone pulling sunshine, flowers and glitter, however I’m sure one day someone studio executive will give it a good go. But your little one is still going to watch Frozen right? Not-child-friendly moments of this include the alienation of Anna, the idea that Elsa is responsible for Anna turning into a block of ice and Hans leaving Anna to die in a room because if he lies, he can become King of Arendelle.

Wow, Anna really got the short straw in this movie.

What about the Lion King, the Frozen of the 90s where the protagonist's father is murdered by his own brother and said murderous brother is then eaten alive (quite literally) by hyenas? All these movies and the many more examples I can think of from the top of my head almost lead me to this impression that my fellow parents of young children are okay with allowing them to watch things like this because it’s Disney, but the moment it becomes any other movie outlet, it’s terrible and should be put on blast.

I saw someone on Facebook say that Channel Five themselves are at fault because showing a film on Easter Sunday because bunnies is odd logic. It is...and it would be if it were accurate. Channel Five were doing a Greatest Animated Films countdown, it had nothing to do with Easter unless the standard religious-turned-Hallmark holiday thing that mainstream media has become had anything to do with the countdown.

I understand that parents want to protect their children. I am, after all, a parent. However, I cannot, and likely will never fathom the idea that it’s somehow not my fault that the programme I allowed my child to watch scared him is anyone’s fault but mine.

Of course, I am not immune. My son is terrified of the incinerator scene in Toy Story Three and yet it is one of his favourite movies. Kids, huh?

We Cremated You Today

And I long for you to appear,
After losing your way across the star-riddled skies
To carry you home.

I cherish my loss,
To remind me
That life is unkind at the best of times...

Brace yourself, 'cause I think I'm coming for you. Look up to the sky.

Home could be anywhere, when I'm holding you...
-"Adieu" - Enter Shikari

They cremated you today, in the West Chapel at Daldowie Crematorium in Uddingston. I watched from a few rows behind as your parents, two blood siblings and the ex-girlfriend who later became your sister wept in the messiest mixuture of heartache, grief and sorrow that I've ever come to witness. I've witnessed it a couple of times in the last two and a half weeks...the longest two and a half weeks of their lives...and they still have the rest to go.

They cremated you today.

I won't pretend that we were best friends. I won't pretend that we were close. I won't pretend that despire that, despite my various failed attempts to keep in contact with you as we are the generation of social media...the thought that the last time I saw you alive was 2009 has blurred my keyboard. The tears have started again. The young man that I was once close to...who I would play with, fight with, love unconditionally and - more than anything - wanted to be your friend...he's not here. It's days like this where I wish I still held even the smallest shred of religious belief. Today, I just wanted to look at the cross above your coffin and hope the man in the sky they hold it for existed in my head and heart. It doesn't. I can't change that. Just...today, I suppose it would have been a small comfort.

They cremated you today.

Your dad's accident didn't stop him. Your grandfather's poor health didn't stop him either. Your brother, your uncle (my father), and two of your friends carried you into the little hall, laying you on the...I don't even know what it's called. The thing that would later take you through a little metal door to be cremated and your ashes placed in an urn. That's how much you meant to those two men. You remember your dad's accident in the high winds, right? He got his back brace off last week. Your brother's girlfriend says the scar on his head reminds her of the Pepsi logo. She's also scared of it. How did a member of our family get a partner with a weak stomach?! I'm sorry, I keep sidetracking when I'm trying to talk to you. But your dad was told he shouldn't carry you when his brace was removed...he did it anyway. He is part of the reason you ever came into the world, and though it is not the order of things, he wanted to see you out of it...be there for you as he had always been. Your - our - grandfather...well, we both know how his health has been for at least six years. That's...that's how much you mean to them. Their health wasn't a contributing factor to their wishes. You would probably have told your father where to go and I wouldn't have blamed you...but you know what dads are like. Your father mightn't be my blood. but his temperament certainly makes him just like my father. Though I must admit, your father and brother...somewhere around the 5'5-8 mark(?) allowing for one's loss of inch after the accident carrying you with granddad and my father and your two friends, all at least 5'11, was quite the sight to see. It amused us all, and would have done to you too.

They cremated you today.

Only one person talked about the tragic loss of life; the priest. I don't know if you knew him, ever met him...I don't know what your beliefs were like, if you went to chapel on a Sunday or if you believed in a God at all. It was a strange affair. This man, speaking matter of factly about the youbg man who loved his life and all within it, who mentioned stories but never really said anything about them. He mentioned you once fought off someone who was bullying your sister and your efforts saw you get a black eye. How you ran into a wall playing basketball and broke your toe in two places. But that was all he said...there was nothing about the valiant young boy that you were, who did what any big brother would do for his younger siblings. There was nothing about the young boy, later young man, who didn't complain about any injury unless it was important. I know your parents and siblings would have been unable...I doubt our shared grandparents or your father's parents would have been up to it either...I guess it's just the selfish part of me wanting something more personal for you, a one of a kind that I will miss so much.

You would have laughed at your parents' choice to play "Shake It Off" by Taylor Swift. You would have laughed with your siblings, cousins and friends. I doubt you would have hid from the shame of that being made public, as Taylor Swift is no longer considered a "guilty pleasure", though I cannot see the appeal personally. Even if she were...it just doesn't seem like the kind of thing you would do. You never hid who you were, what you liked, what you didn't like. I know you would have laughed as we all did, simply because it doesn't seem like something particularly appropriate for a funeral.

We went to a little place near the M74 for the wake. I sat with your blood siblings. Talked and laughed with them. I don't even remember what we talked about. I remember the older sister walked away to speak to others while your brother and his girlfriend spoke to my siblings and I. Largely, other than being reminded of something that sets us all apart from many families in that we do not call our father "dad" and honestly, I don't think we ever have, I don't remember what we talked about. I remember much laughter though. It felt good to be around them again. It's a pity that it was your death that brought it about. We would have loved your company for the conversation.

They cremated you today.

Typing that sentence over and over again...it's almost as if I'm trying to convince myself that it's real. For almost three weeks, I've been living in this denial that you are still here...that I can go to that little house in the east end of Glasgow, ring the bell with my own son in arm and see you. Something I'd never done before...that I'd been meaning to do. That now, I'll never get to. And that is going to eat at me for the rest of my life.

It's a little like how I'm writing this. Why am I writing it? You're never going to see it, and it's addressed to you. The only logic I can think of is that it's some kind of therapy, though if you can tell me what kind of therapy causes you to cry at least six times you're doing better than I am!

I should close this. I don't know how. There's so much I want to say to you. So much I want to tell you. Like I want to know how we were in similar social groups as teenagers but never saw each other. I showed a picture of you to a friend who then told me she'd kissed you in the Cathouse unders. A story I always took with a pinch of salt, though, considering she liked to kiss people. The number of teenage boys with fringes like yours was alarming in 2006!

That and more. So much more that I'll never be able to tell you. I know you had a good life, and that's what's important. It's not about me, though it would seem that it is from this letter. Though it is my letter to you. So if I'm wrong, and there is an afterlife...have a ball up there.

Sleep well, Michael.

I love you.