E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial/Fridge

I could never understand why Elliot didn't go with his best friend on adventures in space when I was a kid. And then I grew up, and realized that Elliot had matured during E.T's visit. At the beginning, he's a very typical 10-year-old, hurting from a divorce, and unable to keep that hurt to himself, even making his mom cry. His brother yells at him for that, telling him to grow up and think how other people feel for a change. When he comes back from sleeping overnight in the forest, he learns that he is just as capable of hurting his family as his father did when said father left his three kids and wife, and at the end, cannot bring himself to hurt his broken family further by leaving with the aliens in the spaceship, no matter how much he loves one of them. Ouch.
- Which makes it Spielberg's rebuttal to the ending of his previous Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the father did leave his family to go gallivanting with aliens (none of whom he had formed a relationship with).
Why E.T. ran into the closet even though Gertie (Who scared him when she screamed.) is in there. Elliot taught him, that the closet is a safe place to hide.