Rediscovering Annie

My kids have discovered the movie "Annie". It is in our DVD player in the car. This was the very first movie I ever watched. I L-O-V-E-D it. I was Annie. I would sing all of the songs everywhere I went. I would act out the different scenes in movie and it was all so real in my head. I could understand her and relate to her. She was me.

Obviously, I could not understand Miss Hannigan. She was the most awful, horrible lady in the world...a true villian.

But now, I feel bad for Miss Hannigan. As I have listened to the movie play repeatedly in the car, I came to a new realization.

I have become Miss Hannigan!

I am an over-worked, bedraggled lady with sagging breasts and a bad hair-do. I yell all the time and my face is usually contorted into a furrow of disgust when I look at my kids. Or I just sigh in despair, "I surrender!"

Remember the beginning of the movie when she tells them, "This place better shine like the top of the Chrysler building or your backsides will." I think I talk like that to my kids everyday. And they cower briefly and then go on their merry ways because they know I don't really mean it.

She sings woefully, "Little girls, little girls, everywhere I turn I can see them"

Grant it, I don't have little girls, but just substitute girls for boys and this will really make sense for me. Everywhere I turn, I can see them, too.

"Night and day I eat sleep and breathe them"

Yep, I sure do that these days.

"Little cheeks, little teeth, everything around me is little."

Amen sister!

"If I ring little necks, surely I will get an acquittal."

I would acquit her...no doubt about it.

"I'd have cracked years ago if it weren't for my sense of humor"

Ain't that the truth.

"Some day I will land in the nuthouse, with all the nuts and the squirrels. There I'll stay tucked away till the prohibition of little girls."

I think I was seeing squirrels yesterday, for sure.

Poor Ms. Hannigan. Poor me. Of course she does get to ride on an elephant at the end of the movie, so there must be a happy ending for me as well.