Childhood Melody

Have you ever heard it?  Those few notes playing a song that you had forgotten?  That haunting melody weaving through your mind, bringing you back to your childhood?  It doesn’t happen very often for me.  For the most part any music I hear that reminds of me childhood is some nursery rhyme or silly song or something fairly basic and quite honestly, moderately annoying.  Generally when I hear those songs all I can think is, I used to adore these songs and sing them over and over again?  These days once is generally enough for me, thank you very much.  If I had siblings I’m sure I’d be more tolerant, but as an only child, no, just no.  So the songs that remind me the most of my childhood are songs from movies, generally Disney songs though there were others as well.  And most of the movies I watched as a child, I still watch today, you know except for the ones that were obviously super juvenile.  (Disney does not count in that category.  If someone tells you that Disney movies are for just kids, smack them upside the head and then make them sit down and watch every single one of them, you have my permission.)

For me, there was one movie as a kid that I was obsessed with, other than Disney princess movies, it’s called Tall Tale.  Basically it’s about a kid who meets Pecos Bill and goes on an adventure with him and John Henry and Paul Bunyan.  I loved the movie so much as a kid that I was determined if I ever got a horse, and it had to be a black horse, I was going to name him Widow Maker after Pecos Bill’s horse.  My mother told me, that, no, I really did not want to name a horse that.  Too young to grasp the meaning of the name, I thought my mom was crazy for not liking what was obviously the coolest horse name in the world.  Eventually I figured out why and reluctantly crossed it off my list of horse names.

I watched this movie for years, over and over again.  If I was sick, I would watch it, rewind it, then watch it again.  Yes, this was back before DVDs.  We still have the VHS tape somewhere in the house…  Eventually I stopped watching it and then of course DVDs became the big thing and I forgot all about it, until a few weeks ago.

As I was browsing through Spotify, seeing if they had any new soundtracks to some of the movies I like coming out, I somehow found the soundtrack to that movie.  Maybe it was the blue bull on the front cover that caught my eye, I don’t know, but I saw it and saved it to my soundtrack playlist figuring I would listen to it at another time.  So fast forward to today.  I’ve been sick the last couple of days which means I haven’t been doing a whole lot other than sleeping, reading, and generally lying around.  And many times when I am bored, I will get onto Spotify and listen to my music and browse for more music.  So as I was looking through my music, I came across the soundtrack again and I decided to listen to it.  Within the first few seconds of the opening song I was transported back to my childhood, watching that movie over and over again, wishing that Pecos Bill would show up and take me on an adventure, naming the horse that I still don’t have, longing to live on a farm.  And as I closed my eyes and listened to the music, I could see what was happening, knew with each shift of the music what part of the movie it was and could watch it in my mind.  That to me is fairly impressive because I haven’t seen this movie in well over ten years.  So I listened to the whole soundtrack, smiling at some parts, crying at others, and just soaking in the music.  For me, it was special, a chance to relive some memories I had forgotten.

As the music came to an end I was struck by how much this movie had been a part of my childhood, not just a minor blip, but something much larger.  Part of it comes from the adventure of it, another part was that the events were something that seemed like they might really happen, and of course there was a horse in a large part of it.  (If you haven’t caught on, I was a bit obsessed with horses as a child, still am really.)  And I’m sure part of it stems from the fact that it’s a western movie.  My grandfather loved western movies and books and I’ve taken after him on the movie front since I used to watch them with him.

So as those last few notes played, I cried a few tears.  I don’t think about my childhood a lot, partially because most of what I remember is school and since I was the school loser, I don’t really have many good memories on that front, and partially because I find that it makes me depressed and judgmental with myself as I think about things I’ve done or how I’ve handled situations and how stupid was that or look what a mess you made.  Since I can’t change the past I try to take what I can from it and move on.  But this, this was a treasure, a treasure from times when I was happiest when I was still that innocent little girl who believed in magic and cowboys and that anything could happen.