spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!

Warning! If you do not want to know how The Sixth Sense ends, DO NOT READ THIS POST!!!

I'm currently teaching Romeo and Juliet to my 9th grade language arts class. It's lots of fun. Some of my students are even smart enough to catch the innuendo smattered throughout the play. (What?? SHAKESPEARE wrote about SEX???) The others are thrilled that the smart ones are asking questions that cause me to choose my words very carefully to make sure I don't cross the line that triggers angry phone calls from parents. Shakespeare was kinda dirty. It's true. And while it was okay, even encouraged, to talk about all the horny little details in my college courses (at BYU, no less), I'm afraid that teenagers in Box Elder County, Utah are not ready for that kind of education.

But I digress.

The real reason for this post is the discovery I made yesterday when I was looking on the internet for good sites to recommend to my students. I was checking out the IMDb to read reviews of the R & J movies. I've never seen the Zeffirelli film, but I know a lot of teachers like to show it to their students. (I'm inclined to show the Luhrman version). So I was looking at the parental guide to the Zeffirelli film, and there was one of those sections that says spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers! If you've never seen this, the idea is that someone has given away something important in the film. If you read it before you see the film, it may ruin your experience. If you want to read the bean-spilling text, you just direct your cursor to the line and the text will appear. This is what it said: "Romeo poisons himself to death and Juliet stabs herself, but no blood is seen."

Seriously? Is there honestly a person over 10 years old who doesn't know that "surprise" ending? In fact, Shakespeare reveals the ending in line 6 of the prologue ("A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life"). And even then, Shakespeare based his play on an already familiar story, so even the most common of theatre goers already knew what was coming before they even squirmed their way in between their muck-covered fellows on the floor of The Globe.

So that got me thinking about the time we went to see Titanic with my brother. We overheard a girl and her boyfriend(?) talking behind us before the movie started. She was obviously apprehensive about seeing the movie. The conversation went something like this:

• Girl: I hope this movie doesn't have a lot of dying in it.
• Boy: *snort* Um, I think it might.
• Girl: Well, I heard that one person dies, but then I told my friend not to tell me who because I didn't want the movie to be ruined.
• Boy: *sarcastic laugh* Ummmm, I think that maybe more than one person is going to die.
• Girl: Oh, well don't tell me the ending. I want to be surprised.
• Boy: *not laughing anymore* You already know the ending, right?
• Girl: What are you talking about? I've never seen this movie!
• Boy: *eyes squinted, eyebrows scrunched, head tilted* Yeah, but in real life. You know what happened to the Titanic. Right?
• Girl: In real life? I don't get it.
• Boy: *pause* *pause some more* *shaking head*
• Girl: What?!?

Oh dear, we've laughed about that for years!

Then there was the time that I inadvertently did the spoiling. Everyone in the world had seen The Sixth Sense except my husband (at the time), his sister and me. Amazingly, we had heard that there was a shocking twist near the end, but none of us knew what the twist was going to be. So we rented the video. The movie was moving along (as movies tend to do), and we got to the first scene after the Bruce Willis character got shot. He was walking around and I guess we were supposed to believe he has miraculously recovered. But I saw tons of foreshadowing, and, combined with the hyped-up surprise ending, I knew that he was really dead. And I said so. Out loud. Without a spoilers!spoilers!spoilers! to cover my words. My then-husband and his sister said, "Nuh-uh" and "that's stupid" and "shut-up". They really didn't believe me. But there continued to be clues to support my assertion throughout the movie (which I pointed out with all sorts of "Ha!"s and "I told you so!"s). When the thrilling twist finally arrived, they both glared at me, and my satisfaction deflated like Pamela Anderson's breasts might after being poked with a tack. (I can just picture her flipping through the air around the room with the scratchy squeak of escaping air coming from her bosoms. Ha!)

I think I might have ruined the movie for them.

Speaking of movies, Brock and I saw a great one on Monday afternoon. If you haven't seen Atonement, you simply must! I couldn't believe Cecilia, the Kiera Knightley character, spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers! And then, when Robbie typed spoilers!spoilers! and Briony said that spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers! I thought for sure that spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers! but the real shocker was when spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!spoilers!

See it!