Saturday, February 19, 2011

Snow White and other awful ideas



No, no, poison!



Just heard the local classical music station with a program I'd never heard before -- music written for the movies. Okay, since I rarely see movies, I figured this should be new to me, and I started to listen as I drove down a busy road en route to Target about which more anon.

And almost went off the road with PTSD when they started in on songs from the accursed Snow White. And after the Target trip, to the library to decompress, and I found an obliging child had put up a collection of stuffed toys, which agreed to be models for the narrative. Snow White has brown, not blue, eye color, about which more later..but this was a doll just acting the part of Snow White, after all.




So, fast backward, hearing the SW song in the car, I quickly switched to another station, but not before a rapid sequence of awful experiences with movies had flashed before my inner child's eyes.

The wicked Queen with the red apple, cackling and rowing off armed with the poisoned red apple to kill Snow White, oh, gah. I know several people of my age who saw this movie at age seven, and never in their lives after could put a red apple anywhere near their mouths. I wouldn't be surprised if my aversion to small boats and rowing dated from then, too!

And my monkey mind rapidly switched to Lassie, and the nightmares and crying after seeing those movies.



I think I was spared them after one sequence of screaming and nightmares about "poor Lassie and her PAWS were BLEEDING..." I wouldn't even read so-called classic novels about animals in case they suffered. Like the miserable Black Beauty. Heck, even nursery rhymes weren't safe places -- remember I Had a Little Pony????

I've often wondered what in tarnation adults are thinking, well, maybe they're not thinking, when they give little children this wonderful treat which will scar them for life! Bambi's mother....oh and that poor Dumbo...




no, no, that way madness lies.

I do remember taking HS to see a Benjy movie and we left in a hurry when he just couldn't stand it. I hadn't realized it was going to be harrowing. So maybe the prospect of Snow White sounded nice to the adults to took me there, too.

One part of that which didn't strike me as horrifying until years later was the pencil on glass quality of dear little SW's singing voice..but I still remember the good part which was that unlike most fairy story heroines, Snow White was not a blonde!!! lovely dark wavy hair and blue eyes. Like mine.

Which brings me with a swoosh to the present day and the necessity to get alternative access to the internet, since the various neighborhood wireless signals are all too weak any more to be helpful. For ages I had choices and was so grateful to generous neighbors who didn't lock down their access, and now I have to think again. It was wonderful while it lasted, but I need my dear old netbook to be working for me.

So after some research and total failure to find what I was looking for online: a stand alone service using a broadband device that looks like a memory stick, but which gives internet access on a contract basis. Online it's all bundles with everything in your house including the water heater and maybe a snowblower, in the contract, and our household won't yield easily to that approach.

Anyway, I found what I need, at the local Target with a perfectly great salesperson who had exactly what I wanted, and I'll run this by HS who knows good questions for me to think about, and then I'll probably spring for it. It is literally what I was looking for, and I'm amazed to have found it so easily. Well, easily once I'd navigated the totally under construction store which seems to be turning into a grocery place. I needed a GPS to find the electronics department...

So there's the emotional and logistical state of affairs around here. HP had a couple of bad days this week, needed quick attention and I needed rapid access to doctor advice, which is email, and his appointments with various professionals are set up that way, too. So the internet is really more of a requirement than a fun deal for me.

However, all's well now, and we will live to fight another day or several!!

4 comments:

  1. I'm in total agreement with your take on those childhood movies - I hated every one of them. Why did they think that the mothers had to die in a lot of them? I flatly refused to allow my kids to see most of them because I well remembered how traumatized I was.

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  2. Glad I'm not the only one who bawled my eyes out in all the Disney animal movies and had my share of nightmares too.

    Isn't technology great until it breaks down? I'm pleased to hear that your problem seems to be fairly easily fixed and hopefully not too taxing on the bank balance.

    Minimiss

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  3. This is the second try, first time an error page came up.
    I'm a bit mazed about the reaction of folk to fairy tales. I devoured them as a child, and so did both my daughters who dearly loved our fairy tale books. Of course animal stories made us cry, but didn't stop us from reading more. Guess sentimentality is a passing thing with us!
    Now I'll try a different profile and see it works this time.

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