Thursday Thirteen #16

Thirteen Things The Sound of Music means to me or The Power of Story to Impact a Life: 1. It was the first movie I ever saw on a big screen in a theater. 2. I was seven years old. 3. I wasn’t to see another until I was 16. 4. For several years afterward I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to be a nun or a governess. (Only until I could be married so I could be a mother, of course.) 5. But even then I identified most with Marta, the Captain’s daughter who had to be whistled for twice in the scene in which the children were being introduced to Maria. She walked to her position in line with a book in front of her face. I already had a reputation for that and continued the habit into young-adulthood. Walking and reading at the same time is something the RP has taken from me. 6. The experience also woke me to the sound of music which I can’t redeemer I ever much noticed before that. I began to vigorously participate in the song services at Sunday school and Bible study. But then as now I could carry a tune about as well as a duck with hiccups. 7. If it hadn’t been for this movie, I would never have missed the dancing that our religion denied us. 8. "The hills are alive with the sound of music.." that song as well as Climb Every Mountain could bring tears of joy to my eyes then and as I discovered Sunday night, they still can. 9. My Favorite Things, Do, Re, Mi, and ‘(What are we going to do about) Maria?' could give me a fit of giggles then. And still can. As can the word flibertygibbet which one of the nuns called Maria in that song. 10. This movie also gave me the idea of having a very large family. I kept hoping for more brothers and sisters after the sister that was born the previous year. None arrived. I also began talking about wanting seven kids of my own someday. A couple years later that became a dozen after I discovered the novel, Cheaper By the Dozen. It has been one of the biggest disappointments of my life that I never became a mother. 11. This movie also made me aware of the fact that some people lived in houses in which a single room could swallow up my family’s entire house and yard. This was the seeding of my consciousness of wealth and class and power. 12. Speaking of which. This movie gave me my first inkling that there was a power in this world that was so much bigger than my father it could require something from him that he could not refuse unless he was willing to flee with his family in the middle of the night, leaving everything they owned behind except the clothes on their backs. And concomitantly there are things powers in this world will require that must be refused at all costs--for submission to them would entail loss of something more precious than life itself. 13. From about the time I saw The Sound of Music my experience of reading stories was dramatically changed. I began to visualize the stories playing out in full color and motion as tho on a screen that allowed a global view with all the variety of camera shots--from long shots of glorious landscape to close-ups of a single tear falling from an eyelash. The same became true of the stories I began to create. There are probably many ways it impacted my sense of how a story is made, of which I am still unaware. It was within the following year--before I turned nine--that I began writing stories. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. amy 2. JohnH985 3. my 2 cents 4. Incog & Nito 5. Susan 6. Candy Minx 7. Tink 8. Jenny Ryan (leave your link in comments, I'll add you here!)

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