The last couple of days have been a bit hair raising quite literally. We've had some strong sustained winds and gusts in the last 48 hours. The meteorolgists have explained the strong winds are caused by a low front moving out with a high front hot on its tail. Okay ... I'll take their word for it. I do know that I said a little prayer that our house wouldn't take off in the wind like Dorothy Gale's from The Wizard of Oz. We were lucky though. We didn't get near the damage other places did.
I'm sure I've seen the movie at least a dozen times since I was a little kid. It scared me the first time I saw it. We didn't have a color TV so I didn't appreciate the dramatic effect of black-and-white Kansas becoming the very colorful land of Oz.
Those bright ruby red slippers on the feet of the mashed Wicked Witch of the East was spooky enough without having the evil twin sister threatening to get Dorothy and her "little dog too!" I was so relieved when she got on her broomstick and flew out of sight.
The monkey creatures serving the Wicked Witch of the West scared me too. When they came swooping down on Dorothy and her friends I couldn't stand to watch and covered my eyes.
As I got older, I wasn't afraid of any of the characters anymore. I felt almost smug as a teenager, nyah, nyah you can't scare me now! After that, I began to appreciate all the humor in the movie and the silly but sweet characters -- the well meaning but scatterbrained (or maybe no-brained?) scarecrow, the tin man in search of a heart for his hollow insides, and the outrageously hilarious cowardly lion, hoping to find some courage some where.
There are some simple but very true messages in the movie and you're hardly aware of them until you sit and think about it:
There's no place like home.
You can have a brain, a heart and courage even if you can't see them.
Good over evil.
Great movie. I'm glad we own it.
PAST: Did you and your family do the "big summer vacation" thing when you were a kid? You know, long hours on the road (or at the airport), "Are we there yet?", "Don't make me come back there!", and all that fun? Do tell...
We didn't go on summer vacation and drive for hours and hours BUT we did go up to see relatives in New York. It took about 6 hours to get there from Maryland. We didn't really have any National Lampoon Family Vacation scenes mainly because my parents couldn't hear. So in order to ask "are we there yet?" we'd have to lean forward and tap my mother on the shoulder. That just was too much effort. We did get into the "stay on your side of the car" stuff but again my parents didn't get involved because they couldn't hear. :P
PRESENT: When was the last time you took deliberate, premeditated time off from work for the sole purpose of goofing off? And what did you end up doing?
I drove the kids and me to Orlando, Florida. We took 2 or 3 days to get there and stayed in these little motel chains. We went to Disneyland and Universal Studios, went on rides, toured exhibits and just had a great time. It was like our big escape from all the bad stuff that happened.
And, best of all, I met TB on the way down to Florida and then stopped in to visit again when we got back.
FUTURE: You have the means, motive, opportunity, blah blah blah. Where do you go, who do you bring, what do you do on your no-holds-barred vacation?
TB and I would go on this luxury cruise to the Bahamas. We'd swim and go sightseeing, fool around, eat as much as we want and not gain weight (ha), dance, play shuffleboard, take pictures, have our pictures taken and have the best vacation ever!