Somewhere over the rainbow

One of my most enduring memories as a child is of watching The Wizard of Oz during lunch times in prep grade. I was in my most joyous of worlds then, sitting waiting for *oh the thrill of it all* my lunch order to arrive in the sandwich basket with everyone else's.

The rustle of the brown paper bags, the sheer excitement of finding mine with my mum's handwriting on it.

"1 x egg and lettuce sandwich"
"1 x chocolate milk"

Oh my God, I thought I might faint with happiness over my finely shredded lettuce and egg with salt and lashings of butter white bread sandwich. So many carb's. So little care to know what they were then. And the chockie milk? The day I discovered the little side flap on the side of the Big M carton, after Shane poked his straw in his, I think I must've let out an audible "eeek!!" I'm sure I would have.

And then Mrs Pritchard would trundle out a big silver TV on the trolley from the library. We'd sit crinkling our lunches in our desks, waiting for the screen to warm up. Remember that? TV's with screens that had to warm up? For, like, about ten minutes?

Such a beautiful, timeless story with a gorgeous, layered meaning. I love The Wizard of Oz. No remake or spin-off could ever, ever beat the original.

Today, after watching a tribute to the song that's been around for a few years now, from a buddy who sent this through, I clicked on the Judy Garland version. And a certain little LGBB, next to me, who was protesting at the end of the "RAINBOWS!! Where's rainbows gorn??" song, suddenly came over very mesmerised. She was literally absorbed into the computer screen. And not in a Hi-5 kind of way either. No, this was different. This was really endearing. I was so fascinated to see her facial responses to Dorothy and Toto! The smiles, the head sways and the eyebrow lifts and flickers. It just shows the sheer brilliance of the song itself, but also that very talented actress, Judy Garland, that a child in this age of bright, in-your-face colour and entertainment can be so impressed and engrossed by a simple black and white hissing picture of a plain looking farm girl singing to her little dog.

Did I mention? I loved Judy. Really loved her, as a kid, in all her early movies. Especially this one.