When I was a kid, I had the distinct notion that you weren’t cool unless you were either kidnapped, violently opressed or orphaned.

This notion was central to the entire approach to play in my household. When my older sister Krissy wasn’t “running away” with a lunchbox and a teddy bear, pretending to be Penny from The Rescuers, my two sisters and I were playing 1 of 4 games:

– Hot Pot: Barbie gets kidnapped, stripped naked and dipped in a “hot pot.”

– Strangling Rainbow Brite: Pretty straightforward. We would tie a rope around her neck and dangle her over the stairs.

– Imprisoning the Little Mermaid: One of us was the mermaid, which meant we were trapped behind a chair and not allowed to speak.

– Tortilla: One person got wrapped up like a taquito and abandoned, immobile.

This concerned my mom, who asked the doctor about our violent play. Turns out it’s totally normal.

Although my mom was concerned enough to query the doctor about us, she was very lax when it came to which movies we watched. The only thing I can remember her hesitating about was “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” when I was 12, because it was “gross.” But it wasn’t the adult movies that affected my worldview. It was the kids movies, and their surprisingly dark subject matter. I would bet that about 30% of all major child characters are orphaned – orphan Annie, The Little Princess, Mary-Kate and Ashley in “It Takes Two.” These movies made having parents seem gauche, and getting kidnapped seem like a rite of passage.

Of course I eventually grew out of these beliefs, and the general belief that “if it looks cool in a movie it’s also enjoyable in real life.” But I didn’t realize quite what utility this love of violence had until a particular Netflix binge of mine.

Last winter, I found myself watching entire series of shows centered on death – “Pushing Daisies,” “Dead Like Me,” the list goes on. While I didn’t particularly love the shows, I found something bizarrely comforting about them. Shows about death should make me have anxiety attacks around icicles or stoplights or thumb pianos (they can snap and pop out your eye), but these did not.

I eventually realized that the calming effect came from watching characters underreact to what in real life are an incredibly traumatizing scenarios. It helps you believe that you have a sense of control, that even if your greatest fears come true, life will go on, pancakes will get consumed, sarcastic jokes will continue.

It wasn’t that when I was a kid I actually wanted to be an orphan or get kidnapped – those were the things I feared most. It was that watching kids experience that and respond in a brave, casual manner made life seem a lot easier. Playing My Little Ponies Get a Violent Divorce was just another way for us to practice a calm response to the insane things that can actually happen in life. Maybe the doctor knew that all along.

–Becky Lang