I’m willing to admit I was a weird child. I talked too much and became obsessed with things I liked. Let’s take the film The Wizard of Oz. To this day my older brother cannot watch this movie. Why do you ask? Well, I became so obsessed with it as a kid that was pretty much all I ever wanted to watch, and to get a four year old to shut up, you just re-watch the same movie over and over again. I feel like parents now a days probably feel this way about Frozen. I am sorry for the scars I left on my older brother for making him watch this movie multiple times in a row, but in the end I know he still loves me.

The whole reason I bring up this Wizard of Oz obsession is because let’s be serious I haven’t out grown it. Not to toot my own horn, I think I must have been a really smart child because I liked all these movies with deeper meanings, like Peter Pan, and of course, The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz is about feeling inadequate, such as not smart enough, lack of love, or the inability to feel fearless. There is also the obvious lesson of good always triumphs over evil, but where is the fun in the obvious.

Old movies and classic stories have the ability to teach children lessons about life. Now, I am not talking about a knight on a white horse saves the princess, because I think those stories don’t do much of anything besides fill little girls heads with the idea that they need to be saved by a man. I’m talking about the stories that bring people together, who help one another achieve their goals, like the tin man, scarecrow, and cowardly lion rescuing Dorothy after she is taken by the wicked witch. What about those strong women who ultimately have the ability to help out her friends or save themselves? Dorothy threw a bucket of water to save the scarecrow from burning, she always had the power to go home through the ruby slippers (silver shoes in the book), and she defeated the wicked witch by accident, but her willingness and quick thinking to help her friend erased her fear of her trapped situation.

Granted no four year old is looking at the deeper meaning of a movie. I’m sure the music in the movie was what drew me in as a kid. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” is my “Let It Go”. It taught me to dream big and that anything is possible if you truly believe it will happen. So, I dedicate this post to my realistic thinking little bro. If you dream big it will happen. You just have to find that inner child to just believe that there is something over that rainbow.