Movie Review: Les Miserables

I went to see Les Miserables on New Year's Day.  It. Was. Awesome.  You should see it.  The only part I had a problem with was when Jean Valjean dragged an unconscious and flesh-wounded Marius through a fully functioning sewer.  Not very hygienic.  The people of revolutionary Paris needed more fiber.  Yuck.  It reminded me of the time when Sam was five years old and he broke his leg.  He had an external fixator that he had to wear for a couple of months.  It was an external bar that was screwed into his femur in three places so he had open wounds that I was responsible for keeping free from infection.  Talk about stress.  The doctor only made it worse by saying, "If there is any redness or fever bring him to an emergency room IMMEDIATELY!"  Needless to say I was frantic most of the time for those couple of months.

During that time Sam was invited to a birthday party for one of his little preschool buddies.  It told him I would take him because he needed to do something fun.  I knew the mother from picking up and dropping off the kids at preschool.  She was a very nice lady.  What I didn't know about her, and never would have suspected, is that she lived in abject squalor.  Her house was a nightmare.  There were piles of what I hope was animal poop in various stages of dryness on the floor.  There were food stains all over the walls of her kitchen as if there had been a cafeteria food fight, and she had upholstered dining room chairs that were covered with crusty stains. How do people spill that much food?  Some of the kids were outside playing with the hose and thought it would be funny to squirt it into the kitchen window.  The mom laughed and didn't tell them to stop it.   I almost started crying when I carried my baby with open wounds into this figurative sewer, much like Jean Valjean must have felt when he dragged Marius through the actual sewer.

I told myself that we would stay for half an hour and then I'd make some excuse to get the hell out of there.  I sat on the very edge of the filthy couch and tried not to smell the smells I was smelling when a disgusting little wiener dog walked into the middle of the room and peed the longest pee in the world right on the floor next to the kids.  I jumped up and said, "Your dog is peeing!"  and the nice filthy lady just laughed and waved it off like, "Oh, he's always doing that."  NOBODY CLEANED IT UP!  It just sat there, saturating the rug and the carpet pad.  I told Sam it was time to go.  He didn't fuss much about it like I thought he would, instead he said, in front of everyone, "Okay, but I have to poop first."  I was going to have to take my open-wound boy into the bathroom of the dirtiest people in the world.  I said, "You can hold it til we get home," and he said, "Nope, I really have to go."  I couldn't decide if he really did have to go or if this was just another stop on his tour of every strange bathroom in the world, and then I had to decide what would be worse, holding my son six inches off the toilet in what was sure to be a biohazard bathroom, or having him crap his pants.  I opted for the biohazard bathroom.  I suppose that is much how Jean Valjean felt when he had to decide whether to leave Marius at the barricade to get killed by the French army, or drag him through the sewer and save his life.