Dad’s World: “Gross! You two are weird!”

My wife and I first went to see Titanic 14 years ago. I lapped up every moment of it. Rose and Jack running along the decks of the ship hand in hand? Sure, that was my wife and I — The Greatest Love Story Ever Told. We went to see it again recently with our three children. It was a completely different experience. Everything had changed.

For starters, we reached our seats late, having quibbled with the cashier for 15 minutes over the price of a family ticket and 3D glasses. “Have we missed it? Has the ship sunk already?” my youngest asked as we squeezed in past two young lovers, whom I was certain were there just to remind us of our glorious, child-free past. “No,” I explained, “that woman up on the screen is the old Rose looking back on her life and thinking about how beautiful her life was before the ship went down.”

My irony was lost on her. She jumped up onto my lap and curled into a ball while my second daughter strategically annexed the seat between her mother and me.