Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Sometimes Awareness Really Sucks

 

I watched the movie The Wizard of Oz again for the nine millionth time.

That was probably the most influential movie of my childhood, as it is for a lot of kids. It was full of things that scared the hell out of me, like tornadoes, houses falling on witches, flying monkeys and midgets, But somehow, our hero Dorothy managed to survive it all.

 But now, when I watched it as an old man, I mostly just grumbled to myself. I never realized before how inaccessible everything is in the Land of Oz.

For starters, take the yellow brick road. Those bricks just look like cobblestones painted yellow to me. And when you try to roll down a cobblestone road in a wheelchair, you  get jostled all over the place because it’s bumpy as hell. So if Dorothy was in a wheelchair, she wouldn’t be able to just merrily skip down the yellow brick road, arm in arm with a scarecrow and a lion. She’d have to move real slow and hang on for dear life.

And it sure didn’t look like The Emerald City was very accessible to me. Sure, the entrance door didn’t appear to have a step. But it didn’t have one of those cripple buttons on it either, where you push it and the door opens automatically. And there were steps all over the place inside. And I didn’t see a single ramp or elevator.

And they sure made light of head trauma. I’ve known people who have taken blows to the head and it crippled them for life. But Dorothy gets knocked out and she wakes up in a technicolor fairyland. And then she’s back in Kansas, where everything is in sepia tones, and all is well. She doesn’t even have aphasia.

I could go on and on but I believe I’ve made my point. If I’d’ve been Dorothy,  I’d’ve been screwed. I’d’ve never made it back to Kansas.

I’ll never be able to view that movie through the same innocent eyes again. It’s like my wise old grandmother used to say: Sometimes awareness really sucks.

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