Walking with Aristocats

This may be a quick thought for the day, but I realized something recently that hadn’t been much more than a surface thought in the past. Heck, I don’t know if I have ever really thought about it at all. Well, maybe not in more than anything like a passing thought. But I could be talking in circles here, so I might as well get on with it.

We had gone for a walk in the early evening. Not an uncommon thing for us. We have some quiet streets and along the path we take we have a huge field where we can let the dog run free for a little bit. Good way to get in a bit of exercise not only for us but the puppy (yeah, it’s a 10-year-old lab. He will always be a puppy) gets some unrestricted running in as well.

Generally, the walks involve myself, my wife, and the puppy. We might spend some time talking about the various things that happen around us and other odds and ends that you share with your best friend (sappy, right?). Anyway, this time we had our oldest daughter along with us. This is the one who has the family and all the fun of trying to create a life. The whole dynamic is strange and something I never thought of happening in my life. Not like this anyway.

I mean, what do we really think about when it comes to raising our children and then them reaching an age where they too are raising children. The whole thing changes how you are involved in their life. You get the grand kids (if we could have, we would have done them first. So much more enjoyable than raising your own kids). And I have started to diverge again from where I was going with all of this. But maybe it all relates in some way…

Either way, at one point tonight my wife had quoted a line from the movie Aristocats. This was an older movie that this particular daughter had loved growing up. It’s one of those movies that as a parent you have seen so many times, you can quote it and you don’t even like the thing. I imagine you know what I mean. This is a moment when the whole circle of life thing comes back into play. My daughter’s kids are reaching that age where they have their own shows that they watch on repeat if you let them. And they aren’t the same shows that my daughter watched growing up. Whole new level of torture for her to live through. Yeah, stuff like this pleases me as a parent and grandparent.

I am sure you are saying right now, “What does any of this have to do with anything?” See, now I am finally reaching a point of some sort. I realized something from this movie that I hadn’t thought of before, or at least thought deeply about. If you don’t know the story, it all comes down to this crazy cat lady wants to leave her vast fortune to her cats. Her butler as a faithful servant thinks it should be his. That’s where everything goes crazy. After all that, the only thing that matters for the thought is the story takes place in France.

Now, why does this matter?

Because everything is in English. This makes perfect sense because the movie is being shown for an audience that speaks English. We just assume that they are speaking in French for the story, but we know to understand them they need to be in our language. Now are you ready for this? The old lady has a French accent.

Yeah, the woman who is speaking English due to movie magic though in the story would be speaking French is the only character with a French accent. And for the most part, this shoots right over our heads. We don’t think anything of the situation at all.

I know, it’s essentially a stupid and meaningless thought. But this is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. And now I have put that thought in your head and you will watch other movies and the thought will haunt you and make you question how life works. Because nothing really makes any sense what so ever…

So the thought went a little longer than I thought it would.

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