On Wednesday afternoons, I teach programming to a group of elementary school kids at the school I do some freelance work at. They are all, as you might imagine, very into the Avengers right now.
The past few weeks, they have wanted to play Avengers in and around the projects I’ve had them working on. Obviously, I am not averse to this. They each play a different Avenger and told me i needed to be the bad guy. When i refused to be Thanos (fuck that dude), they agreed to have me be Loki. Obviously, this tickled me.
Now the thing about kids that age is they take this sort of play very seriously. If you are pretending to be Loki, you ARE Loki to them. They will ask you questions and expect you to answer them in-character. It is delightful.
Even more delightful is the fact the bulk of them saw Endgame this past week. This caused them all to immediately inundate me with additional comments and questions. Their take-away that they REALLY wanted to share with me was the fact Thor plays Fortnite (because THEY all play Fortnite).
Well, obviously, I growled “noobmaster” in my best growly Thor voice and just like that, I was no longer Loki. Immediately, nine kids surrounded me and were demanding attention from Thor.
The highlight of this was when one of the kids, a girl who takes this all probably even more seriously than the rest of them, explained very patiently why Thor should learn how to use a phone. Highlights include:
1. You can call your friend Steve when you want your hammer.
2. You can play Fortnite on the mobile app.
3. There are apps that show you where all the good bars and restaurants are.
4. You can text your friends when you’re feeling sad or lonely.
And I realized, in the course of interacting with these kids as this character they all love… they internalized a lot more of Thor’s pathos than I had really expected. Their takeaway WASN’T that Thor played Fortnite and drank beer (though both those things were mentioned). Their takeaway was that Thor was sad and lonely and needed to be able to talk to his friends. The kid who likes to insist he’s Iron Man even made sure I sat next to him during circle because “You’re my buddy, Thor.”
The fact that the message these kids took away from the movie was one of empathy and caring made me feel so warm and gooey inside. Kids are pretty cool sometimes.
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