The Sound of (Old) Music

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

THE SOUND OF (OLD) MUSIC

During Easter weekend, I caught some of “The Sound of Music” on television.

But then the film got to the part with its yodeling puppet show – and I was forced to turn away.

I’ve not watched the entire movie since I was young, but there are parts that I’ve always remembered: people running in the night, grassy mountainsides, wholesome children, and a bright-eyed governess who seemingly had the ability to invent song lyrics without pause.

When the film was released in March, 1965, I was 5, going on 6. One afternoon, my family of four squeezed into a car with a family of three and we traveled an hour from Pawnee Rock to Hutchinson to see the show.

As the littlest human being in the car, I didn’t get my own seat, but was passed from Mom’s lap to Dad’s. (This was back when children had free-range movement in vehicles, to which I say thank goodness that I never had to endure the trauma of being confined in a child-safety seat.)

The trip to see “The Sound of Music” was the first time I’d ever been inside a movie theatre. Children’s films weren’t marketed as they are now, and besides, our family was just not a movie-going family.

(Note: my parents did take my brother and me to a second film, one year later, in 1966, “A Man for All Seasons,” but the only clear-cut memory I have from that show is the sound of the guillotine.)

So, in 1965, as a kindergartener, the theatre experience was new. For one thing, I hadn’t expected the darkened room that you walked into off the street.

In the dark I couldn’t see the sloped aisle, but it tilted me foreword. I felt as if I had suddenly grown the biggest, heaviest head on the planet. Walking downhill, top-heavy, I nearly fell into spontaneous somersaults.

We took our places; my dad lifted me up and sat me down. And the seat promptly folded me in half – knees in my face. Luckily, children are natural yogis, quite bendable.

As a runt of a child, I was not heavy enough to counterbalance the spring-loaded seat; I’m guessing that Mom or Dad held the seat down for me during the entire show.

And I must have been wearing a dress, because I remember how the seat’s bristle-like velvet felt on the back of my legs as I listened to “Raindrops on Roses,” and “Sixteen, Going on Seventeen.”

Now leap forward in time to 1995. I’m in the living room of my rented bungalow, walking past the TV set. On a news program there’s a segment about the 30-year anniversary of “The Sound of Music.”

Not only did I immediately recall the bristly folding seat, the sloped theatre aisle, and the Von Trapp family hiding in the night, but I had one of those moments that makes a person stop and freeze.

“Oh, man,” I thought, “I can remember something from three decades ago.”

So at 35, going on 36, I felt the first blush of aging, that moment of depressing realization that a large chunk of time was now behind me.

And even worse, during this recent Easter weekend, as “The Sound of Music” played on television, there sat on my desk an envelope from AARP, another reminder of the now-larger chunk of time that I’ve accumulated.

Yes, that cult of old people is stalking me. How did they find me? How did they know that I’ve lived for exactly five decades? Can they smell wrinkles? Or do they smell the fear?

Besides the intrusion, I was not exactly warmed by the business-like detachment of this initial mailing a month before my 50th birthday. Rather than requesting one’s membership and a $16 check, maybe AARP could, instead, just send a pleasant birthday card.

Something gentle and genial would be appreciated here!

And it wouldn’t hurt, say, to include a complimentary note that acknowledges one’s beauty or youthfulness or contributions to society.

Really, kindness is everything. Especially when you’re 49, going on 50.

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Copyright 2009 ~ Cheryl Unruh

Me at six.