“It’s an attic.”
“No, it’s a tower.”
“An ATTIC!”
“No….a….TOWER!”
And so it began. Yet
another argument between my two girls.
Both smart, and both determined to be right. The controversial topic this time? Where was Cinderella’s room located.
I know what you’re thinking.
With all the problems in the world, this is what my girls choose to
worry about? I can honestly tell you I
don’t even remember how the topic came up or why they both began defending
their positions staunchly. But it
started in the car on the way to church one Sunday and had their Dad asking
“Does it really matter?”
Silly question Dad. Relevance
has nothing to do with it.
It resulted in them entering the house after church and
putting in the VHS video with each of them excited to “prove” the other one
wrong.
I went to start lunch and when I came back I asked them who
was right. Surprisingly, they had agreed
that the movie did not provide the video evidence they were hoping for. Based on what Disney animators showed us, it
could be an attic or a tower depending on your point of view.
Then a funny thing happened.
They kept watching the movie.
I pointed out to both of them that they didn’t need to keep
watching. The answer they had been
searching for was not going to be found in the movie.
“But Mom, we’ve never seen it.”
Wait……….WHAT?
“We know the story but we’ve never actually watched the
movie.”
[*Insert feelings of motherly failure here*]
How in the bibbidi-bobbidi-boo could this have slipped by me?
So for the next hour they sat and watched the rest of the
movie. They learned to love Jacques and
Gus. They compared Anastasia and
Drizella to girls at school. Elisabeth
complained about the cinematic quality of the animation (“The colors aren’t
right----Cinderella’s dress is supposed to be blue, not white”). And I’m sure while watching Cinderella do all
her chores they empathized and thought “My mom makes me do chores too.”
I watched with them and realized that Cinderella was perhaps
the first example of speed dating. I mean,
a subplot of the movie is finding Prince Charming a wife and it has to be
accomplished in one evening. Sort of
like a precursor to “The Bachelor.”
Elisabeth thought the animators could have made Prince Charming more
handsome. (I thought they did okay.)
I apologized to the girls for not having watched the movie
with them earlier.
“It’s okay Mom. We read
the book.”
Ah yes. ‘Book Mom’
strikes again. It’s no secret that I’m
not raising princesses and it’s also no secret that more often than not, my girls
have to read the book before they can see a movie. That way I can get the pleasure of hearing
them say “Well, the movie was good, but the book was so much better.” I never intended to start this in the
preschool years though when life should be about fairy tales and Prince
Charming.
But when it comes to Disney movies, they just never really
watched the princess ones. They weren’t
big fans of Alice in Wonderland or Beauty in the Beast. They preferred Jungle Book, Aristocats, Sword
in the Stone, or Disney’s version of Robin Hood. For a ‘princess-type’ movie Elisabeth would
rather watch Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, while Rachel will
always pick The Sound of Music. (She
strongly associates with the Maria at the beginning of the movie who is always
getting into trouble).
The good part is that they still enjoyed the movie (as did
I). However, it left me wondering what
other items on the ‘Childhood Bucket List’ I had missed.
“By the way Mom, I’ve never seen The Little Mermaid
either.”
I guess we’ll be going ‘under the sea’ in the near future.
