Ivy, and Marley, and Me.

**SPOILER ALERT**

For some reason (fate? God? A weird slip of my finger on the mouse?) the movie Marley and Me appeared at the top of our Netflix queue. We didn't know this until it arrived when we were expecting Grown-ups.

My husband and I were kind of upset. "What was that doing on the queue?" he growled.

"I think I put it on there to watch with the kids," I said, sheepishly. At one time in our lives, we thought watching movies with the kids would be fun. We have since found out that if the movie is not animated and full of royalty, watching it with the offspring is not a pleasant experience. It's up there with root canals and public speeches.

At any rate, one evening after dinner, we put it in the PS3 and sat down as a family to watch it.

There's no dog at the beginning, so I had to keep Ivy interested. Story watched it for approximately 24.7 seconds before she was running back and forth, jumping on the chair, and shouting random comments in my ear (Mommy!! MOMMY!!! Is Abby a dog?)

Finally, the puppy appeared. From that point on, as long as a dog was on the screen, at least Ivy was engaged. As the movie wore on, it became clear to us that the dog was going to die. (There's the spoiler!!)

I had two choices: Stop the movie and pretend the dog got better and it was over, or face the sorrow of a six-year old who has just watched an animal die. I decided to go with the latter...our dog is nine years old and at some point, she's going to have a real life lesson in family pets dying. The parent in me knew it would be hard, but it would also be emotionally cleansing and healthy, right?

WRONG.

Never ever ever ever ever again will I think that way. Ivy cried for almost two hours after that movie was over. As soon as we thought she had stopped, fresh wails came out of her mouth, tears flew from her eyes, and she asked us unanswerable questions:

• Where did Marley go when he died?
• Why didn't they just make the movie with him being alive and happy at the end?
• Why couldn't the doctor fix Marley?
• Did the family get a new puppy?
• Who made this movie be like this?

We made he watch the "behind the scenes" footage to show her there really wasn't a Marley, just an actor dog. I tried to explain to her that sometimes sad movies are good for us; it would remind us to treat Abby good (which of course brought a whole barrage of questions about Abby's heath ending in Ivy saying, "I sure hope us and Abby all die at the same time," and I'm thinking, no, I hope not because that would mean our house gets hit by a bomb in 4 years or something).

Ivy finally came up with her own solution that would put her fears and sadness at ease: She wants us to write a letter to the director. In this correspondence, we should explain to him how the movie should have ended and that we would appreciate it if they could remake the movie with the appropriate closure. I said, sure, we'd work on it in a couple days, hoping that she'd forget about it.

but she's not, of course. Four days later, she's still bugging me about this letter at random times. When I'm in the shower. When I'm cleaning toilets. Before I am awake.

I think I'm actually going to have to write it.

And no, we're probably not watching anymore movies with the kids. Ever. =)