Musings

Though I recently started catching up on the missed Disney movies of my youth, for a long time The Jungle Book, Aladdin, and Beauty and the Beast were the only Disney movies I watched. We didn't have a lot of money when I was little, so we didn't go to many movies. Please don't misunderstand, I had a great childhood, I just had limited Disney knowledge.

I remember being disappointed when my dad came home with a VHS copy of The Jungle Book. I wanted a princess movie, like most little girls, and I couldn't figure out why my father would think I wanted to watch a "boy" movie with a bear and half-naked boy on the cover! We rarely got new movies, this was a bummer, or so I thought...

My dad and I curled up on the recliner, and watched the movie together. I stubbornly tried not to like it, but eventually Mowgli and Baloo won me over. It quickly became my favorite cartoon, and still is.
If you've ever seen the movie/read the book, you know Mowgli was reared by wolves. When I was little, my dad and I would pretend to be in a wolf pack. I was a baby wolf at least once a day back then. We would "howl" at the moon, and pretend to take "wolf naps" all the time.

My favorite daddy's girl moments were usually just before he tucked me in bed for the night. He would cradle me in his arms, sway me back and forth saying "just a baby panther cub, sleeping in a tree." I would always giggle because I knew the "wind" would eventually blow hard enough to "break the tree limb". That's when dad would say "Oh noooo!" and drop me on the bed. I loved it! I think I made him tuck me in like that until I was 10. I was probably too heavy, but it didn't matter to him.

For my birthday, my dad gave me the money to get a copy of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. He wanted me to have a nice copy, and since most copies in his local bookstore would be paperback, he told me to buy it while I was at school and bring it back to him. I did so, and today he returned it to me. On the inside cover, he wrote these words: