There's video footage of my 10th birthday where I'm wearing

Host: The neon lights of the old cinema flickered like tired stars in a smog-filled sky. A faint hum of rain whispered against the windowpane, and the smell of buttered popcorn hung like a ghost in the air. It was near midnight — the hour when memory begins to blur with dream. Jack sat at the corner table, his grey eyes reflecting the blue glow of the screen, while Jeeny leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table, her hands wrapped around a cup of coffee that had long gone cold. On the wall, an old poster of Eraserhead loomed like a black-and-white deity of confusion and art.

Jeeny: “It’s strange, isn’t it? That quote — the little girl in the pink T-shirt, and her father walking in with Eraserhead as a *birthday gift. It’s both absurd and beautiful.”

Jack: “Absurd, yes. Beautiful? I’m not so sure. Imagine being ten and having your father shove Lynch’s nightmare into your childhood evening. It’s not beauty — it’s indoctrination. A parent’s eccentricity dressed up as ‘artistic education.’”

Host: A flash from the projector painted his face in streaks of light and shadow, the cinema’s hum syncing with the tension in his voice.

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s how she became who she is. Jane Goldman turned out creative, didn’t she? Maybe it’s not indoctrination. Maybe it’s inheritance — the kind that feeds imagination through strangeness.”

Jack: “You romanticize dysfunction, Jeeny. There’s a difference between giving a child curiosity and giving her trauma wrapped in art. Lynch is not bedtime storytelling — he’s the stuff of existential collapse.”

Jeeny: “But don’t you think that’s what life does to us eventually? We spend our childhoods in pastel innocence, then one day, reality bursts in holding Eraserhead in its hand — grotesque, absurd, honest. Maybe that father was just... honest earlier than most.”

Host: Jeeny’s eyes glowed softly in the flicker of the film, her voice steady but full of ache, like a melody remembering its first note. Jack’s jaw tightened, his hand clenched the edge of the table, the sound of rain punctuating the silence between them.

Jack: “Honest? You call it honesty when we rob children of their illusions? Childhood isn’t a lie — it’s a shield. You don’t hand a kid Eraserhead; you hand her a bike, a storybook, something that tells her the world is kind before she finds out it’s not.”

Jeeny: “But if she never sees the strangeness, how will she face it later? Don’t you remember the first time the world disappointed you, Jack? Wasn’t it worse because you were told it was always going to be fine?”

Jack: “Better to be betrayed late than corrupted early.”

Jeeny: “Is it corruption, or is it awakening?”

Host: The screen changed — a distorted face, monochrome and hollow-eyed, hovered in the darkness. The soundtrack hissed like a breathing wound. Jeeny didn’t flinch; Jack looked away.

Jack: “Look at that. You think a ten-year-old could even make sense of this? The father wasn’t showing her truth — he was showing her chaos. There’s a difference.”

Jeeny: “Chaos is truth, Jack. Look at history. Every revolution, every art movement, every change — it began with something people called ‘madness.’ The Impressionists, Kafka, Warhol, Lynch — they all showed us the absurd, the distorted reflection of our own quiet despair. Maybe Goldman’s father understood that a child who learns to see distortion won’t be destroyed by it later.”

Host: The rain grew heavier, beating against the glass like impatient fingers. A flicker of lightning washed through the room, cutting their faces into halves — one illuminated, one shadowed. They looked like two halves of a single argument — heart and reason, forever at war.

Jack: “That’s romantic nonsense. You talk like pain is education. But tell me, how many kids come out stronger from being shown darkness too soon? Most just learn to fear — or worse, to numb themselves. You see poetry, but I see broken adults still trying to name the shadows from their childhood.”

Jeeny: “And yet, you watch movies like Schindler’s List, don’t you? You read about Hiroshima, Chernobyl, revolutions. Why? Because you believe truth should be faced. So what’s the difference? Is it just the age?”

Jack: “Age is the difference. A child’s mind isn’t ready to dissect suffering. It’s supposed to dream, not deconstruct.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s the tragedy, Jack — that we underestimate children’s capacity for depth. Do you know Anne Frank wrote, at thirteen, about the duality of human nature — the goodness and cruelty she saw in the same people? Maybe she didn’t need to be ‘protected’ from the world to understand it.”

Host: Jack’s eyes flickered, a faint tremor of conflict passing through them. He leaned back, his voice lower, roughened by memory.

Jack: “You know what my father showed me when I was ten? A ledger. Rows and columns of debts and deadlines. He said, ‘This is what life is — numbers that don’t lie.’ I learned too early that people vanish into systems, Jeeny. That’s not art, that’s realism. And I hated him for it. Maybe I still do.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe you understand her father more than you think.”

Jack: “Don’t twist this.”

Jeeny: “I’m not twisting — I’m reflecting. You both had fathers who gave you a piece of their truth, whether through a ledger or a Lynch film. It scarred you, yes, but it also shaped how you see the world. You built logic from pain; she built imagination from absurdity.”

Host: A small pause fell between them — a moment heavy and fragile, like a glass figurine on the verge of breaking. Outside, a car splashed through a puddle, and the neon reflection trembled across the floor.

Jack: “You make it sound poetic, but it’s still unfair. A parent’s job isn’t to impose their truth; it’s to prepare a child to find her own.”

Jeeny: “But how do you prepare someone for a world that doesn’t make sense? The world itself is Eraserhead. Noise, distortion, beauty hidden in decay. Maybe all a parent can do is open the door early and say, ‘Here — this is the labyrinth. Learn to walk.’”

Jack: “Or they can give their kid a map instead of a maze.”

Jeeny: “But maps are lies, Jack. Every generation draws one that no longer fits the terrain.”

Host: The tension snapped into silence. The film ended. The screen went blank, and the darkness seemed almost tangible, pressing close, like a held breath.

Jeeny whispered: “Maybe the pink T-shirt and Eraserhead aren’t opposites. Maybe that’s what life really is — the soft and the grotesque, coexisting. Innocence wearing strangeness like a second skin.”

Jack: “You think the world can be both gentle and grotesque?”

Jeeny: “It already is. We just spend most of our lives pretending one side doesn’t exist.”

Host: Jack exhaled, long and slow. The rain softened to a drizzle. In that quiet, he seemed smaller — not defeated, but human. The neon lights outside blinked into a softer hue, as though the night itself was forgiving.

Jack: “Maybe you’re right. Maybe protecting children isn’t about hiding the darkness — maybe it’s about sitting beside them when they see it. Making sure they don’t face it alone.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. It’s not the film that scars — it’s the absence of someone who explains why it matters.”

Host: She smiled faintly, the kind that flickers for a second and lingers in memory. The projector light caught her face, painting her features in shades of tenderness and defiance. Jack reached for his coffee, now cold, but didn’t drink. They sat in the quiet cinema, surrounded by the ghosts of films and childhoods — both strange, both sacred.

The rain stopped. A distant sunrise began to push at the edge of the sky, spilling soft silver into the wet streets. The poster of Eraserhead glimmered faintly in the dawn light — a strange blessing from the absurd world they had just made sense of.

And as the light grew, both of them stayed still — two silhouettes against the fading dark, bound by the understanding that sometimes, the strangest gifts are the ones that teach us how to see.