Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

When I was a little kid in New York I saw the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. It immediately became my favorite movie in the whole wide world and launched me off into countless happy hours playing with a little metal car my father had given me. The only thing the car actually had in common with the car in the movie was that it was an old-style chasis with working doors. My car was blue, red, and black, and it certainly did not have wings that popped out the sides.

It didn't matter that the car wasn't much like Chitty though. It was enough to fuel my imagination. I had a couple of little tiny dolls called Kiddles and they would happily ride around in my Chitty on a network of dirt roads carefully smoothed out of the yard by me, and like the movie, they would suddenly burst into flight, and perhaps a made up song that was a derivative of one of the songs from the movie.

I had never seen that movie again until last night. Gordy put it on NetFlix for me after a discussion about how fond I was of the movie as a kid.

Last night we gathered up a couple glasses of wine, piled up on the couch and started watching. Memories flooded back. Beginning with how much I wanted to believe Dad was Dick Van Dyke, which led to remembering how I thought Mary Tyler Moore was like my Mom... Focusing back on the movie Gordy and I laughed about how people back then could just suddenly hook-up and burst into song with everyone present knowing the tune and the words perfectly.. AMAZING!

I wasn't sure how I felt about seeing the movie after all. No disrespect meant to anyone, especially not Mr. Ian Flemming (although I suspect he could not really give a rats ass about what I think right now), but I could not even make it to the part where Chitty takes off flying into the air.

I went back to my dark corner feeling like I needed to apologize to the little kid in me... what a hopeless dork she was.