Anne of Avonlea

Ever since I have become a dad weird things have moved me at odd times. Particularly scenes in film. I have always been a sap when it comes to cinema, a sap because I have the unique ability to buy into most films 100 percent. My father also shares this quality but to a much greater degree then even I. The film becomes all to real and for us the mark of a good film is one that we literally live for at least three days after viewing. Not that we go around pretending to be some character (though I may have done this after seeing my first Jim Cary movie) but the film and its images are burned so deeply in our minds eye that they flash and replay over and over again. I don't know about my father, but I often dream the film. Dramas usually have the greatest impact. Thrust upon me is a whole gamut of human emotion. When I was younger it was almost unbearable.

Forest Gump, for example, was one of these films. I saw it in the theater when I was ten and from the war scene on bawled my eyes out. When lieutenant Dan was cursing God during the storm I walked out. I had never heard anyone talk to God that way and to my naive eyes and ears this was utter blasphemy. I returned to the theater and finished the film. When the feather floats out of the book at the end I lost it. I sobbed and sobbed, heaved for air, and sobbed some more. I sobbed violently for an hour.  

Bridge To Terabithia is another film. Both Linz and I found ourselves on a plane from California to Connecticut blubbering like babies to the best in-flight movie of all time. 

And now, to Anne of Avonlea. I did not sob like I had in the past, but I was moved at an unlikely scene. Catching only the last 30 minutes, I saw the part when Anne befriends Katharine, a firm Liberian type woman with a very large stick shoved way up her tukis, an unpleasant character. When Anne invites her to her house for the holidays Katherine, realizing she is loved by someone, is freed from her staunch self. Anne had the power to see potential and did not let anyone get away with wasting life. I shed a single tear but was holding back a river. Weird.