There’s only one movie theater in the neighborhood where my boyfriend and I are living in New Orleans this fall, a single-screen old pile called The Prytania. This means, we haven’t been able to see every good-bad film that we ordinarily would, already having missed autumn nuggets like Sorority Row, Jennifer’s Body, and Whip It. So when he suggested we see a midnight screening of Where the Wild Things Are last night, it felt like a betrayal. “Do you really want to stand in line with a bunch of hipsters and Tulane students,” I asked, “wearing footie pajamas and eating cupcakes, waiting for a chance to re-live their childhoods?” I was worried about the nostalgia factor, in case you hadn’t noticed, and the way it colors, and often ruins, our favorite things. As a former preschool teacher and school director, I’ve read Where the Wild Things Are more times than most grownups can imagine. (Your kid may have insisted on hearing it every night, but my kids stayed three or four years old for the full decade I was in the classroom.) I adore the book, and its brilliant way of capturing the essential childhood struggle: to be in control, and out of control, but feel protected. So when I spotted a pair of college kids waiting in front of the theater dressed in footie pajamas and crowns, I was not encouraged.

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