Musical Appreciation

On day last summer, my sister Annie and I went to get one of our twice-yearly pedicures.  We randomly went into a new place close to her house and were escorted back to the standard vibrating chairs.  "Would you like a movie?" asked the technician in broken English, pointing to a grouping of ten DVDs.  My eyes widened.  "Moulin Rogue," "Dreamgirls," "West Side Story," "Chicago."  I was among my people.  We spent the next glorious hour getting our toenails painted and watching "Mamma Mia" and I was ecstatically happy.  My sister, not so much.

When you confess that you love musicals, people give you the same wooden "Oh wow, she's a nutball" smile that they also reserve for people who collect Precious Moments figurines or who number their pets in the dozens.  When I turn on the car and my "Ultimate Broadway" CD starts up, some of my friends have broken speed records reaching out and pushing the power button in disgust.  We musical aficionados are a trodden-upon bunch.

As a little kid, I would  get super excited when "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" did an opera episode.  That Daniel Striped Tiger had a real gift for conveying emotion in his singing, I'll tell you that.  I'd watch "Wizard of Oz" and "Mary Poppins" over and over again on our futuristic BetaMax player (which my dad held on to well into the 90s).  My family just didn't understand and would balk when I'd want to watch "Annie" for the fourteenth day in a row, but I just filed the injustice away, imagining how I'd sing about it with real raw emotion when the musical of my life was finally produced.

My movie collection.  This is roughly 1/3 of all the DVDs I own.  Don't judge.

None of my friends are musical junkies like I am.  My sisters avoid them like the plague.  That left only one thing to do: recruit the next generation of my family.  I watched "The Wizard of Oz" with my cousin Allie one night.  She asked me if Kansas was a real place and I explained to her that yes, it was a state near Iowa and Nebraska.  She nodded and then said, "Is it still black and white there?"  Yes, very cute, but she soon confessed to liking some Barbie movie more than the story of Dorothy so I had to move on.  Certain things just cannot be forgiven.

Luckily, my goddaughter Jamie has become a gigantic fan of musicals.  We've seen a bunch of them together and she GETS it.  I will get a text from her out of the blue saying "I was just thinking about "Dreamgirls."  She's part of my tribe.  She also appreciates my Ethel Merman impression, which let me assure you is a rare show of good taste in my family.  When I die and she inherits everything and the rest of my family is furious, I'd like her to remind them of this, right after she sings a medly from "Les Miserables" at my memorial service.