I’ve not used the phrase “dirty little secrets” because, well, I’m a Baptist boy and Baptist boys don’t have secrets at all, much less unclean small ones.
No, my secrets fall in the “Extremely Tame” column. The first one is easy to write about; the second more complicated, so I’ll write about the first. And without further ado, here it is:
I don’t like the movie The Sound of Music.
There. I said it. And no one has showed up at my house (yet) to tie me up and make me watch the curtains into dresses scene ad infinitum. But I’m waiting.
“But how,” you say, “do you know about the curtains into dresses scene?”
“Ha! Ha!” I laugh derisively. “My nuclear family consists of me, three woman and a female cat. Need I say more?”
Of course not. Let me hasten to add that I do like the stage production of the musical. And the sing-a-long version does sound like fun, like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Maybe someday.
The other secret is, as I indicated, more complicated. And it was this (notice I wrote “was.” I’ve had a change of heart).
I believed that animals did not have emotions.
When I told people this (reluctantly), they reacted first with disbelief, questions, horror and examples from their experience that showed their pets, at least, felt significantly and deeply. I got so I didn’t bring the subject up. I felt that animals had certain behaviors which we interpreted through our human experience as emotions.
But I have seen the light.
Actually, it was more like I have seen the article in the Washington Post this past week which cited studies that showed that animals have language. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2014/08/22/chirps-whistles-clicks-do-any-animals-have-a-true-language/). I had thought that animals didn’t have the brain structures to support speech, but if they can speak, my background in linguistics tells me they have emotions.
And so, nearly a fifty years of a deeply held belief melted away like Frosty the Snowperson on a sunny day.
It was time for it to go.
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And, now you can read Nacho’s numerous facial expressions? ha ha
Thank you for the Sound of Music confession. Now that you’ve broached the subject, I recall not wanting to see it at the theater. Its title reeked of a music lesson. I was lukewarm on it afterward because, like you, I found many of its elements implausible, particularly the curtains!! Then, walking over the Alps with all those kids…, very unbelievable. Turns out, in real life, they took the train.
Thanks for your comment , Lady!
I’ll put the “Sound of Music” right up there with “I Love Lucy”! More evidence we were separated at birth!
More evidence of lying in TSOM–the mountain pass they take at the end of the movie leads to Germany! Don’t you just love it?
Let’s do lunch…or tea…or breakfast…we can meet and not eat at all!
Take care, BWWF!