When I was four years old, my dad came home beaming from the
used video store. “You’ll never believe
what I found!” he said excitedly. I had
been asking for the latest Land Before Time tape, so I was disappointed when I
saw that he had let me down. In fact, I
threw a full-on fit. I tearfully told
him to take the movie back.
“This
was my favorite book when I was just a little older than you,” he said, a bit
crestfallen. “Just watch it. You’ll love it.”
It didn’t
take too much coercion to get me to sit down and watch a movie, Land Before
Time or not. So I watched, at first
skeptical of the seventies-style animation, terrifying creatures, and Glenn
Yarbrough’s disconcerting vibrato. But
when “The End” flashed across the screen, I ran over to the VHS player and hit
rewind.
“Really? Again?” My dad asked. I just nodded and pressed play.
In a
hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit.
I spent
that entire day watching and rewatching that old VHS tape. I laughed at the antics of the dwarves,
cringed when goblins captured the company, covered my eyes at the sight of
giant spiders, gasped in delight when Bilbo climbed an old, dark pine in Mirkwood
Forest to reveal a gorgeous, green treetop world of sunshine and blue
butterflies. I answered riddles in the
dark, fought in the Battle of Five Armies, and sang along with all of the
songs. “I am Gandalf, and Gandalf means me!” I shouted, running around the
house with a blanket slung over my shoulders like a cape. I was lost, from that moment onward, to the
strange and beautiful world of geekery.
I read The Hobbit in first grade, where I was
also introduced to Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer’s Stone and Redwall. I began to read voraciously, finishing
three-hundred page novels in a single night.
I read in the car; I read while walking; I read under the covers when I
was supposed to be asleep. I melted the carpet
of my bedroom while trying to read on the floor with a bedside lamp so that my
parents wouldn’t catch me (they eventually stopped encouraging me to read and
started encouraging me to be a “normal child”).
I taught myself Elvish. I made
friends with other readers, and together we lived in the magical worlds that we
loved so well: we defended Redwall Abbey, journeyed through wardrobes, fought
off armies of orcs, befriended dragons, rode on the backs of red elk and giant
wolves, visited other planets, and cast spells.
I finished reading The Return of the King when I was nine,
mere weeks before Peter Jackson’s film version of “The Fellowship of the Ring”
was released. I begged my parents to
take me. I was immediately enthralled-
the music, the scenery, the lines taken word-for-word from the books… I hardly
even complained that Legolas and Aragorn didn’t look anything like I pictured
them (they’re boys, they’re not supposed to have long hair!) and that Tom
Bombadil wasn’t in it and what is Arwen doing here, that’s supposed to be
Glorfindel!
Now, more than a decade later, a
new film version of “The Hobbit” is premiering, and I find myself looking back
on the impact Mr. Tolkien and his colleagues have had on my life. Without the books I’ve read and the films I’ve
watched, I would be a completely different person today. They have instilled in me a deep-rooted sense
of idealism, the knowledge that truth and beauty and light and love will always
conquer evil, and the desire to do good and do it well. They have shown me the value of optimism and
determination. How lucky I am to have
had role models like Hermione Granger and Lucy Pevensie and Leia Organa and Eowyn,
rather than Kim Kardashian and Snooki! I
am a proud product of fantasy and science fiction novels. Geeky things have changed my life—for the
better. I’m still enchanted by the
worlds that I spent my childhood exploring; I fully expect to be in tears
through the entire movie tonight. And I
can’t wait to step in the front door one day with a DVD in my hand and say to
my future children,
“This is the story that shaped my
life. Watch it. You’ll love it.”
