Old Yeller

When I was 9 years old I watched a movie with my cousins Trina and Cally at our Grandma's house during the summer of 1988. This powerful good movie was called "Old Yeller" Growing up, I didn't watch very much TV unless my father came home from work. I didn't watch very many movies either. So watching "Old Yeller" was entertaining, also very educational for me too. I was extremely sheltered and protected by my mother as she was homeschooling me. If there was a TV show or movie she didn't know anything about she would watch it first then let us kids watch it ONLY if it passed her test. I was happy to just watch "Old Yeller" without her pausing the film in the middle of it's playing asking us viewers "What would God say about this?", "Do you think this is a true message or would God say differently?" It made watching movies with my mother unbearable, even in my young age I knew it was not how most people watched TV or movies. That afternoon with root beer floats in our hands, my 2 cousins and I sat on the living room floor watching this old Walt Disney movie. It was a classic, (I was learning what even THAT word meant.) I was always asking a ton of questions with my cousins around, not only did they seem so normal and aware of things, but they were nice to answering all my questions sometimes they would be surprised I didn't know some very basic things. During the movie I would ask and talk while trying to understand the story. Finally Cally snapped back at me saying "DEE, hush! You asked questions later, the movie is on!" I was glad to be made aware that talking during a movie was rude. I remembered the very first movie I ever saw was "Bambi" I was really little maybe almost 3 years old, It was an outside movie, a drive-in with a big speakers coming through the window of my father's brown ford pickup. I didn't grasp all of the film but I did sense Bambi's mother dying and I cried so much. My mother worried to my father that they scared me to much, but I fell asleep crying only to wake up at the end. While watching "Old Yeller" I cried all over again. It was such a powerful movie for me,  what I enjoyed this time was hugging onto my cousins as we all three cried hard. Grandma sighed saying "Well maybe I should have thought about how girls react emotionally to sad stories." As we sat at the counter on the bar stools in Grandma's kitchen, we sat talking more about the movie and sharing Kleenexes. It was the beginning of my desire to own a dog and have that amazing friendship in my life!