I'm Ada Limone, and this is The Slowdown.

I have a friend who says she can watch any TV show or movie, as long as nothing even slightly

bad happens to animals or children.

I take it one step further and say, I'd rather just watch anything that was made for children

preferably starring animals.

My husband jokes that I have the taste of a 12-year-old, and I do.

I crave tenderness, clean sarcastic jokes, and earnest witty dialogue.

I even like it when someone learns a lesson, especially if that person is the bad guy.

How many of us learned that big lesson of mortality from our childhood books or films?

I remember my entire fourth-grade class sobbing in unison heads on our desk at the end of

the book where the red fern grows.

There was a time when I felt like shouting, okay, I get it, we're all going to die.

And still, the biggest lessons came outside the book or film when I watched a parent

or a teacher or my older brother become moved by something.

It was one thing to learn our lessons, but it was another to realize that the lessons

never stop.

It's the beautiful thing about time.

We are always experiencing so much at once.

It's amazing we can carry it all.

There are days many of them even recently where I've wanted to return to those kinder

movies and books of my youth.

In them, death is an allegory and everything ends in a joyous song.

...