In the Shadow of the Moon

We got invitations to an advance screening of this tonight, and dutifully trooped off to the luxury seating of the cinema. (Trust me, not so luxury at 28 weeks gestation.) I think it went on for a bit long for D'Arcy and he needed more explanation than I was able to give him in a crowded cinema, but I think he got something out of it. I think that part of his problem is that having grown up totally in the information age he's a bit blase about this whole "we went to the moon" caper. A few weeks back we took him somewhere where there was a sample of moon rock you could look at, and he was kind of non-plussed about how awed the beloved and I were about it. His take was pretty much "what's all the fuss? It's a piece of rock". Our take "yeah, but it came from THE MOON!!! Some guy wandered out on to the surface of the moon and picked it up, looked at it, decided it was worth keeping as a sample, put it in his bag of moon rocks, and brought it back to earth FROM THE FUCKING MOON" he still didn't get it. He still doesn't get it. Are we doing something wrong here, or is he just 7? On Friday his class is going to the art gallery to look at stuff including, as he pointed out to me today some aboriginal art that is thousands of years old. He seems to have a sense of awe about that (kind of) and he is fundamentally less interested in "art" than he is in "space". What is it about going to the moon that is so ho-hum? Actually part way through the film when Jim Lovell was talking about Apollo 13 (and I explained that things went wrong, there was an explosion and the astronauts didn't get to go to the moon, but had to fix the problem and come back instead) D'Arcy asked, pointing to Lovell on the screen "Did he die?" and I realised that the documentary style wasn't working for him so well, and said "No, that's the actual guy who did this. It happened to him, and he's still alive." Hmm... End confused-parent rant I think.