I'm officially into my second trimester now, and while the nausea has somewhat drifted quietly away, my emotions are still at an all-time ripeness.
David and I were having a conversation about old Disney films (I had remembered Big Red as being the sequel to Old Yeller, but it isn't. It is Savage Sam. Now I need to see all three in a row again, to remember the different plot lines. And David needs a new copy of Big Red in paperback, just like when he was a kid). Anyway, one thing led to another and I was tracing the early career of Kevin Corcoran who plays Arliss in Old Yeller and Savage Sam and Francis in Swiss Family Robinson (and who I thought for some weird reason was a child Kurt Russell...), and when I mentioned that he also played cute little Jimmy Bean in Pollyanna, David replied that he had NEVER. SEEN. POLLYANNA.
He didn't even know Pollyanna is played by Hayley Mills! His response to my exclamation of that fact was, "Really? I thought Pollyanna had dark brown hair."
***SHOCK!!***
Well, this would not do. So as we were driving to a friends' house Sunday evening to play games, I proceeded to tell David the synopsis to Pollyanna, to explain to him just how good of a film it is (everywhere in Lubbock is a standard 15 minutes away, which is a pretty good amount of time to summarize books, films, or why a certain Led Zeppelin song is better than all the rest. We take turns tutoring each other on all the important things in life via our drives together).
I told David all about how Pollyanna is basically an L.M. Montgomery character: backwoods orphaned girl goes to live in huge old mansion filled with very traditional old ladies and an aunt dangerously on her way to replace said crotchety old lady; orphan's charming personality and gumption melts everyone's hearts, and everything good that happens happens in nature, surrounded by trees and wildflowers and Sunday picnics. It's basically the kind of story that makes me hope that Spooky is a girl so that I can relive all the magic of Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon with her, when she gets to the age when the moon is magical, and fairies probably do sleep in daffodils.
Anyway, I described all the great characters and Pollyanna's Glad Game, and--oh dear, I'm tearing up again just writing this post out again....David, I hope you are laughing with me wherever you are reading this--when I got to the end of the film, and I tried to explain to David about what happened after Pollyanna snuck out of her top-floor room to go to the charity picnic carnival party, I choked up...I couldn't finish my sentence. My lip was quivering, and I just kept repeating, "When she went to the climb the tree and climb back through her window, she...... she.... she....." and then I full out started to cry.
It was so unexpected and so RIDICULOUS that David and I both started laughing. I laughed and wiped my tears and sighed a bit, but when I went back to tell him about poor Pollyanna, I started to cry AGAIN.
So David started trying to guess:
"she....got caught?"
shaking my head, crying
"she....decided not to climb back up?"
more head-shaking, crying getting louder
"she....fell out of the tree?"
nodding and bawling
"she fell of the tree, and....she broke something. An arm? No? A leg?"
fierce nodding, fierce sniffing
I tried to explain to him that the real tragedy was how it broke Pollyanna's heart, because she was going to be paralyzed, and she couldn't even play the Glad Game, and she didn't even want to leave her room. But then, oh, then everyone showed up, and carried Pollyanna down the stairs.......oh, how can any of you remember this film and not start crying over the beauty of it?
Anyway, this was an all-time emotional breakthrough for me: crying over a 15-minute film summary. I've gotta make David watch this movie with me. I'd suggest we buy a box of Kleenexes, but I think I'll just take a towel out of the closet and use that.
