the hills are alive

This past week's Friday Five from Rev Gals was inspired by The Best Movie Ever, The Sound of Music. I didn't have time to write on Friday, but I do have a Sound of Music story of my own. It goes like this:

For years, The Sound of Music was on NBC (I think) every Easter. It might still be, for all I know; I'm usually in the official Pastor Coma o' Easter by the evening, so I no longer watch television that particular night. But when I was young, we watched it every year.

We didn't have a VCR, so all I knew of the movie was what I saw on television. Every year, Maria would climb to the top of the mountain and sing, and then she would descend and get kicked out of the cloister for being too spunky, and then she would transform the house of Von Trapp and the Evil Baroness would get her comeuppance (even though I secretly thought the Evil Baroness was also the most beautiful woman in the world in her dance dress), and then the Captain would fall in love with Maria, and then the nuns would sing her down the aisle.

And then, with the nuns' voices singing, "how do you solve a problem like Maria?" and the bells of Salzburg ringing in my ears, a commercial would come on, and my mom would turn off the television and say, "time for bed!" and I would happily trot off to bed and dream about long cathedral aisles and handsome, fertile, widowed captains. I guess. After all, we were only allowed to watch G-rated movies when I was a kid. Which meant we watched mostly Disney movies from the 1960's featuring computers that filled a whole room and a very young Kurt Russell, or cartoons. And in the cartoons, the movie ends when the couple gets together and there's a wedding. Or at least a big pretty dress and some kind of dance. Maybe with fairies. That's what I knew of movies: when people get married, then the movie's over.

Until one year, when I was probably 10 or so, and Maria had walked down the aisle in her wedding dress, and the commercial came on, and I stood up from the couch to go to bed, and my mom very unexpectedly said, "I guess you can stay up for the end of the movie this year."

I'm sorry, what? There's more? But she got married! Isn't that it? THE MOVIE DOESN'T END HERE? MY PARENTS LIED TO ME?

I think it's possible that The Sound of Music killed my childhood.

Anyway, I stayed up for the end: the whole crazy Nazi-chase, Rolf-betrayal, nuns-stealing-car-parts, mountain-climbing end, which I loved. My childhood actually rolled on, fairly uninterrupted. No permanent scars.

I used this story in a sermon once. Can't remember why.

Mostly, I just think it's funny.