Let’s talk watching movies…. Well, I use the term “watching” rather loosely. As with all things, Z watches movies just a little bit differently.
- Z rarely watches a full movie from start to finish. Instead he stops and starts it throughout the movie and might stay on a particular shot for several minutes (like, 10-30 minutes…). He gets especially obsessed with group shots of characters.
- Z may only watch a particular scene in one movie then navigate to a different movie to a particular scene in that one. I’ve seen him filter through 6 movies at once. He knows the exact time his scenes happen in each movie and moves through them rapid fire. It’s like watching a DJ in action!
- Z will create a reflection of a movie by putting two iPads together with one turned off. Or he will find the one thing across the room that is reflecting the movie (a mirror or a window). He watches the reflection instead of the real deal. So basically he is watching it backwards and that is perfectly normal.
- Z has favorites: Cars, Cars 2, Monsters Inc, Monsters University, Corpse Bride, Coraline, Hotel Transylvania, Nemo, Willie Wonka (with Johnny Depp), Up, Alice in Wonderland (old skool), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Shark Tale, Monster House. These have not changed for years.
- Z also loves really basic videos involving the alphabet or counting. His YouTube playlist contains a bunch of these including some where they call the letter Z not as “Zee” but as “Zed”… hmmm
- He will watch the same 2 minute scene over and over and over…. And over…
- Z will get one movie on the big screen TV and then pull it up on his iPad and find the same scene but will put them a little off on purpose so it’s almost like in stereo.
- Z gets really mad at sequels because his scenes are not the same but the characters are. The ones listed in his favorites are only after forcing him to watch the 2nd one over and over until he finally loved it. Cars 3? Still hasn’t made the cut…
- Z gets very mad at new movies. I try and mix things up with something new and he will seriously wrestle me for the remote to turn it off. New movies literally have to be watched in small increments over many occasions before they may make it to his favorites. We’re talking years here…. He found a trailer for Ratatouille and watched that for weeks. So I bought him the movie. Guess who hated it and is still boycotting it?
- Sometimes he actually hates the movie but likes the trailers they have before the movie and will watch those over and over. We had a DVD player that would skip the trailers and he would get so mad we had to stop using it. He never does the “Skip Intro” on Netflix because that is usually the best part!
- Sometimes he just likes the menu only. We simply have to leave the DVD startup page on and never press play.
- Don’t get me started on the one we call “the pigs”… It’s this crazy one called “3 pigs and a baby”. He’s OBSESSED. Definitely stims on it and can’t be redirected to something else. I actually hid the DVD and he found that darn thing on Netflix!!
- He has figured out how to cast his iPad to the family TV. So we will be watching a movie and then all of a sudden it switches to an Alphabet YouTube video. Many times he is not even in the same room as us when he does this.
- Recently, we have noticed that he will play a part of a movie that seems to follow what we are talking about or what happened that day. For example, there is a part in the Ratatouille trailer that says something like “There is never anything good to eat around here.” He will play this over and over and I have to assume he is telling me to go to the grocery store.
- He watches YouTube shows that are in other languages. We have noticed ones in Spanish, Japanese and some others we can’t identify.
My dear friends, there is so much more. It’s just another example of how differently his mind works.
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Tilted Axis 