“We’ll help you through it,” my 9-year-old granddaughter offered, followed by her 7-year-old sister’s “Don’t worry, Nana, I’ll hold your hand.” And so it was that I watched The Wizard of Oz, making it through a movie for the first time that delivered frequent nightmares to me as a child, and for six decades pushed me from any room where it was playing.
Thinking it funny that I feared The Wizard of Oz, years ago my son at 12 or 13, gave me a Wicked-Witch-of-the-West figurine as a joke. I keep it in my office as a reminder to embrace the popular philosophy: “Feel the fear, and do it anyway.” But I never did that with The Wizard of Oz. When my granddaughters spied that green-faced-witch on the credenza of my new office, they asked why I had it. It was that day I told them more then (continue reading →)
