Xueling likes being photographed.
So it was a surprise to me when, at the event above, she looked solemnly at the photographer next to me when he asked “can I photograph you?”, started to nod, and then suddenly let out an excited scream.
(just as a baseline, the last time I heard her scream like that was when she saw this :
She jumped up off the sofa and pointed with both hands and screamed like a metalhead in a Megadeath moshpit.)
I turned around, wondering which Disney princess had caught her attention.
It wasn’t a princess.
Which struck me as odd, because she’s never said anything about Cap before. She’s loved Iron Man ever since that scene above, and she’s endlessly fascinated with Spiderman, but she’s never really paid much attention to Captain America.
Well, until the last fight scene in The Winter Soldier, when she suddenly sat down (she’d been running around the living room doing all kinds of things prior to that).
“Daddy. Why isn’t he blocking him?”
“He threw his shield away.”
“But why?”
“He doesn’t want to fight his friend. His friend doesn’t remember him, but that doesn’t matter.”
“But he was fighting him just now.”
“He had to do something important just now.”
“Was he protecting people, Daddy?”
“Yes. And now they’ve been saved, so he doesn’t have to worry about them any more.”
“And he doesn’t have to fight his friend any more?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
She didn’t say anything after that.
We try to explain morality and ethics to children, but in the end, it’s the stories we appreciate with them that truly teaches them the complexities of right and wrong.
When a man puts aside his weapons and armour and stands defenceless before his killer in an attempt to redeem him, and your child watches, your child learns something.
When Parker puts his suit back on after five months of pain, when he sees a child trying to take his place and takes the time to make sure that he doesn’t feel belittled, and when your daughter is watching it and you’re explaining it to her; she most definitely learns something.
Something, perhaps, to do with all the truths that you can’t really say out loud, because they’re the truths deep in your heart.
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