Seeing Monsters
Took me three tries to watch The Wizard of Oz to the end. First time, couldn’t have been more than 4 or 5. Watched on the only television my family owned, a bulky black and white set, leaving me unable to experience the full effect of the magical moment when Dorothy’s house falls from the sky, lands with a thud, she opens the door, the scenery transforms from the drab gray of Kansas to Oz’s brilliant colors.
As soon as the Wicked Witch of the West appeared out of nowhere from a swirling plume of smoke, I could bear to watch no more and fled. I cowered as far from the living room as I could get, in a linoleum-floored utility room in our old farmhouse where the twin tub wringer washer was kept. Stayed there until my siblings assured me the show was over.
The movie played on TV only once a year back then, so I was a full 12 months older by the time the chance to redeem myself came around. Knew the witch was coming, was braced for her entrance. Settled in after that, confident—too confident—I’d make it through the whole thing. The story took a darker turn, then another, tension rose, I started to crack. When the flying monkeys swooped down into the Haunted Forest to haul Dorothy and Toto off to the witch’s castle, I made a run for it.
The following year I did manage to watch the entire film. Went on to see it dozens more times. Years later, watched with my son when he was around the same age I was when I first saw it, was amazed he didn’t once seem unnerved from beginning to end. Either I was an especially lily-livered child, or kids grow desensitized to fright at an earlier age than used to be the case.
Could be a bit of both, but that’s not the point of telling this story. As we age, we outgrow certain things and let those go, clothes, shoes, coats, boots, childhood friends, playground hijinks. Some no longer fit, others just seem childish, we find it embarrassing to hold on to them in our haste to be grown-ups. Once-cherished stuffed animals get thrown out or stored away. They did us no harm, on the contrary proved quite comforting, yet they get discarded.
We give up childhood innocence, never do replace it with any adult surrogate. We come to see innocence as naïve and weak, opting instead to allow ourselves to grow jaded and cynical, seeing those as proper responses to the rough and tumble of adult life.
When we outgrow childhood fears, these too take on a new form later in life. All kids are afraid of monsters of one kind or another. Those flying monkeys set me off. For my son, it was Bruce the shark in Finding Nemo. When Bruce nearly leapt off the screen with jaws wide open, a terrified boy left my wife and me with no choice but to leave the theater. When the monsters of our youth no longer scare us, we curiously do not put fears behind us, we go so far as to monsterize people who are the least bit different than us, turn them into targets of our wrath and blame.
We leave behind childhood horseplay, but move on to gamify cruelty and killing, choose the most childish of leaders to handle our nation’s affairs, men and women highly skilled in scaring and demeaning and maiming.
Once we say goodbye to the freedom from care we knew as children, we waste no time bidding welcome to worries that enslave us as adults. With aging comes greater responsibility, making it impossible to be as care-free as we once were. But taking responsibility doesn’t make it necessary to load ourselves down with so many matters beyond our control, to the point of crushing our zeal for living.
As we age, the boundless energy of our youth wanes, but this loss is at least theoretically offset by gains in insight and wisdom. I say theoretically because it’s so glaringly apparent that many of the choices we’re making as a nation right now are neither insightful nor wise. Can’t help but sense a loss of innocence as America hardens, becomes less generous, less idealistic. Can’t help but feel how tightly fear now grips us, how cynical we’ve allowed ourselves to become.
Pondering what lies ahead for our country and our world, I’m thinking it’s never too late to grow up, but it’s also never been more important to remember the simple blessings and virtues of youth, what’s necessary to let go, what’s worth holding on to.
