Since we have been having to quarantine ourselves almost completely from anyone outside our neighborhood friends and family, that we trust to be around, since February. I have noticed how Madison's "happy" side has really been low. So the first day back after the Labor Day weekend was a light day for school work and I decided that we were going to have a movie day together. Once Emma went down for her nap and we finished up the days assignments we went to the media room and turned on Prime Videos.
Now I am a child of the 80's and proud of it too. I loved the movies of my childhood and sharing them with my kids is a bit of a thrill for me. Movies then were imaginative, exciting, wholesome, original, and many were filled with wonderful actors & actresses we won't know till later in their careers. In my opinion they had something completely missing from the majority of television and film today. Today everything seems to have some sort of agenda to it that they are trying to force down peoples throats so it makes me refrain a lot from showing my kids anything outside of the classics of my time or older unless I watch it first. So I was so excited when I went to my video library and hovered over one of the old movies I had and saw a suggestion that was not only a movie I loved as a kid but also had just been talking to my husband and neighbors about a couple of days before. 'The Boy Who Could Fly' circa 1986 with Fred Savage back before The Wonder Years.
If anyone remembers this movie and loved it like I do. Then you know how awesome it was to find such a sweet and wholesome movie that not only I adored as a kid but that I could share with my kids as well without locating a VCR (hahahaha). It was so much fun sitting next to my munchkin, Madison, while she watched this film that made my imagination soar when I was young. Listening to her laugh and see her smile so big was the best feeling! She didn't care that it wasn't filled with seamless graphics or innuendos. It was just a movie that took to the imagination of someone who maybe was able to want to fly so bad that he was able to make it possible and about bully's and wanting to make it around the block in your big wheel. I miss the simplicity that cinema gave to us when I was a kid. Cartoons nowadays are so dark and full of adult innuendos. Movies are trying to get young kids to disrespect their parents and make it cool to do. Turn our daughters into harlots with the clothes that barley cover skin and parents my own age, who have to know it is setting a terrible example, just don't care to deal with being "parental" and just try to be their kids "friend". I just don't get it.
Anyway. Amazingly after we finished that movie she was so happy and in such a wonderful mood. When it finished I was looking over the "recommendations" from that movie and couldn't believe my luck to come across "The Explorers" circa 1985 featuring River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke when they were tweens. This was another one of those imaginative movies about building your own space craft out of a tilt-a-whirl, of all things, and whatever else you could scavenge together as a kid then being contacted by aliens that help you travel into space. I mean how cool would that have been right?! Plus I thought Ethan Hawke was such a cutie when I was little! What?! Come on, at least that's more original than saying Zach from Saved By The Bell right? So now I am enjoying her laughs to this film as well as my youngest who has now woken up to watch it with us.
If you are my age, younger, or older you should look into these films if you've never seen them. They can give you such a nostalgia feeling and you could be very surprised when your kids might actually like them too. I have shown some of my old movies like these that I have on DVD to kids that have come over and they love them and usually ended up asking me if I have anymore to watch after they see one. Those are moments that make me so happy. I love sharing stuff with my kids and their friends. The things that I grew up with that powered my imagination and creativity.
One spotlight to this pandemic we have found ourselves in that I have found is that it has given me the chance to say "no we can't go to a movie or to the mall" and get them to play card games, do puzzles, go outside and pretend the swing set is a pirate ship and use sticks for swords. I remember how I used to take some of my play kitchen set tools outside and mix dirt and water together to make mud pies; pretending I was a chef with a restaurant or using an old phone and keyboard to pretend I was an office executive. I'm serious! I really did do these things as a kid! Without the ability to go places I now have an excuse to get my kids to do and create with their imaginations. Every six months or so I order a couple of pounds of Legos from a dealer I found. I don't buy those expensive kits to make one thing out of them. I buy random pieces so that they make their own creations. I love seeing the different ships and aircrafts my stepson comes up. Seeing what my kids create from their own thoughts is the best feeling ever!
I say forget about "Canceling Culture". Let's bring back the culture before social media and mine craft and Fortnite. Let's bring back the culture of spending all day outside using our imaginations and rainy days of watching movies that made us feel good. Hope everyone has a fabulous week and that this post brought smiles to your face and ideas to your mind. God bless!