A couple of weeks before N’s 3rd birthday, I took him and his brother down to the Animal Kingdom for a day of fun. Actually, we hadn’t planned on going to the Animal Kingdom, but that’s another story.

One of the best things about the Animal Kingdom is the Lion King show. It is easily the most entertaining live performance in all of Disney, which is saying a lot. We haven’t been to the Animal Kingdom in several months, but it used to be the first thing we did whenever we went there.

Unfortunately, a week prior to this particular trip the boys had gone with their mom (*) and N had gotten scared during the show. He really didn’t want to go back. He discussed this calmly in the car on the way down, saying things like “we don’t have to see the Lion King show. No. I’ll see it when I’m three. We don’t have to go.”

So we didn’t go to the Lion King show. He was, after all, going to be seeing it when he was three. Later on, however, the boys discovered that there was a movie inside the Tree of Life. They both really wanted to go. I vaguely remembered that it was scary and warned them, but they wanted to go anyway.

Big mistake. It’s a Disney 3-D movie with the works: moving statues that pop out around the theater, surprising squirts of water, even puffs of odor timed to coincide with the show. C held his own pretty well, but N was absolutely terrified. He clung to me with his face buried in my shoulder for the last half of the show.

After we got out, I apologized to them, explaining that I didn’t know just how scary it was going to be. C, of course, wanted to go back and do it again. N was less enthusiastic, but more gracious: “That’s okay, Daddy. Maybe I’ll try it again when I’m four.”

“Four?” I asked. “Not Three?”

“No. Four.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll do the Lion King show when you’re three and the Tree show when you’re four.”

“Or five,” he said. “Maybe six. How about when I’m six?”

That was fine with me.

[* Writer’s Note: Just in case you think J and I are avoiding each other. She took them to the park on a week day as a special treat before she started a week of working at a day camp. I stayed home with them during that week, and that’s when we ended up going down.]