When things got bad, it's how we bonded.

It's that time of the week again. MamaKat's writer's workshop is due again! What have I chosen this week? What was it about that movie? Describe A movie you once had memorized.

The Wizard of Oz

We were, like a vast majority of other Americans were (and still are), poor when I was growing up. We went time and time again with the cable being on, and then being off. With this thing braking, those pants ripping, this and that going wrong. My mother struggled with depression and dealt with two kids the best way she knew how to. I remember there was one time when our cable had been shut off because of other bills needing to be paid, and during this particular time my sister and I were not at all bothered by it. We had not only gotten used to it, but we had realized that we could have a perfect excuse to use the dining/living room table as a fort, once again! That table was AMAZING, by the way! A spaceship, a fort, a tree house, and even a damned car at one point!

That was a traumatizing event for me, by the way. I used to own a monkey puppet that I loved with every ounce of my little soul. My sister and I were playing under the table one day, in our new car that I was driving... because duh, my sister was too young to drive! We had window cutouts, a steering wheel, all of our friends (stuffed animals) in the car with us. Shannon (my sister) and I were arguing over where we were going and when she was going to get to drive. We had the awesome heater on... or in reality there was a floor furnace under the table that was warming the inside of our "car." Well, I reached back to grab my awesome monkey only to see that his once black eyes were now brilliant white and staring at me like a spooky ghosty! He (apparently) was leaning against the furnace and his eyeballs burned the color off of them. Lucky for me, my mother was awesome and fixed his eyes with permanent marker... and off we went down the road again!

BUT... that is not the point of this post!

During our times of no cable television, we had a few options. My aunt would record weekly shows (Friends, Grace Under Fire, and the like...) for us on VHS and we would watch those, OR we would watch the Wizard of Oz, Ace Ventura, the Secret Garden, and Richie Rich over, and over, and over again. Shannon and I share the same month for our birthdays - she is the 14th of March, and I am the 19th, and this particular year the Wizard of Oz had come out around our birthdays and so we watched the movie a million times.

Shannon and I could recite every word of that movie, knew exactly when that evil witch was going to pop up, and when Dorothy was finally going to get to go home! It was the best time of our lives. That and playing and mastering every damned level of "Yoshi"... or Super Mario Brothers as you other people like to call it.

Ahh the good old times when we were poor and we found stuff to do (like going outside and being active!) that made life fun!