The Titanic Obsession

Titus has been obsessed with the Titanic since the beginning of December. He's seen the movie, he's read the book (or at least had it read to him)... no detail is too small or uninteresting. We've done character analyses on Captain Smith, and social analyses on the class differences, raising questions as to the injustice of the rich people's better chances of survival. Time and again, we have questioned the idiocy of neither having enough lifeboats on board, nor being able to lower them into the ocean when fully laden. The obsession even extends to the private lives of the main protagonists of the film, namely Kate Winslet and Leonardo di Caprio. Titus believes that if they had got married in real life, Kate "wouldn't have wasted time with her two ex-husbands" and that Leo "would have been married by now, and not be waiting for his girlfriend to say yes". (He may have a point, but I doubt they would be interested.) We know, now, that the Titanic had four funnels, only three of which were functional. We know what the three classes had for dinner. And we speculate endlessly on what became of Rose (Kate Winslet's character) and how she managed to live so long. And why she insisted on bringing her goldfish to the research ship.

Usually Titus' obsessions fade after a couple of weeks and are replaced by a new one. Not this time. This morning, on the way to kindergarten, I was coerced into a quick roleplay, where he was the captain of RMS Carpathia (again, sorry if you already know, but if not - this was the ship that came to the Titanic's rescue) and I was various sad, cold, wet passengers who had just been hauled out of the lifeboats. The captain was trying to make a list of all the survivors' names. It was quite a challenge even for my imagination, which is, to say the least, vivid. Perhaps it didn't help that we were struggling along in a blizzard.

I will get a brief period of respite this afternoon, as his friend Joseph is coming to play. Try as he might, Titus cannot get anyone else of his age to be interested in a ship that sunk 99 years ago.