At the movies

I must have been thinking about how easy it is now to see movies. You don't need to go to the theater, you don't even have to buy or rent a DVD. You can access an awful lot of movies from your home. And my adult children do just that.

These thoughts led me to thinking about the way it was in the past. You know, when I walked 4 miles to school, uphill both ways, in the snow. No, not that past, the past I actually lived. In the real past, in my family, going to the movies was a special occasion. I can remember the first movie my mother took my sister and me to; it was The Shaggy Dog, which I think starred Fred MacMurray. That was followed by more Disney movies - Flubber, The Parent Trap, and Old Yeller. My little brother's first movie was The Music Man. He sat on the edge of his seat with huge round eyes the whole movie.

Then there was the Sunday night TV show, the Wonderful World of Disney, which often showed Disney movies, usually broken into parts shown over two or three weeks. Mostly, these were really good stories, fun to watch.

All these movies stayed with us, my brother, sister, and me. We talked about them, sometimes acted out parts. They weren't the best movies ever made, but they were certainly a lot of fun.