The Wizard of Oz

When I was a little girl, I was very sensitive and easily frightened by things I saw in movies or on TV.  For this reason, around the time I was 5 my mom decided that I was not allowed to watch The Wizard of Oz until I was a little bit older.

One afternoon I was over playing at a friend's house, and her mom suggested we watch a movie.  "YAY!"  we all yelled, and jumped up and down as 5 year olds tend to do.  But then...her mommy pulled out The Wizard of Oz.

I remembered my mom saying that I couldn't watch that movie, but when I told my friend and her mom they didn't believe me.  So in went The Wizard of Oz and there we sat on pillows in their living room watching the movie my mommy told me not to see.

It was very scary.

My friend sat there, watching happily as the Wicked Witch of the East got squished under the flying house, her stripidy stockinged legs sticking out awkwardly from underneath.  I buried my head in my pillow; it was probably the first time I'd seen someone dead or dying on TV.

I really liked Toto, and the tornado parts really weren't all that scary, and the Munchkins were super cute.

But...

The Wicked Witch of the West and with her black pointy hat, green warty face and scratchy voice absolutely terrified me.  Every time she came onto the screen I ran out of the room, buried my face in their staircase and whispered "my mommy said not to watch this, my mommy said not to watch this..." over and over again, until the Witch was gone.

Needless to say, my mom wasn't very happy when she came to pick me up and found out what I had been watching on TV. 

Children are very impressionable creatures.  I have, for the last 20 years of my life, been afraid of the Wicked Witch of the West.  It doesn't matter that she got melted at the end of the movie, or that she was actually brown sugar.  Her scratchy voice and disgusting, creepy face and spider like fingers are permanently burned into my brain.

Last night as we were falling asleep I confessed, "I used to be afraid of the basement at my parent's house because I thought the Wicked Witch was going to get me."  (And the basement at my grandparent's house; pretty much all basements.)

"Wasn't your room in the basement?"  He asked.

"Yes, only when I was in high school though. I was safe in my room, it was out in the office and on the stairs that she might get me, so I always had to run up the stairs as fast as I could to get away.  And she also couldn't get me on the family room level or the living room level, just the basement-basement."

"That's weird."  Joey said.  Sometimes boys just don't get it.

"I don't even know why I brought it up, now I'm going to have nightmares about her.  And I have really only seen that movie once, too."  I sighed and rolled around so as to dispel any and all images of the Wicked Witch from my mind.

So be careful what you let your children watch or you'll have some chickeny little girl who is still afraid of the Wicked Witch when she's in her early twenties because of a childhood trauma.  But now that I'm all mature and in my mid-twenties, I'm not afraid of her anymore.

Not really, anyways.  Not a lot.  Um, maybe just...a little.