Ditsy or Deceived, but I still Love it

Last week was Spring Break. It was an event to be savored, since my entire college career has been null and void of anything even similar to a sliver of Spring-Breakishness. As my supervisor astutely (and sarcastically) noted, "it's because Spring Break represents sin and they want to keep students from committing sin." That made me laugh. Hard. Anyhow, a log of my amazing Spring Break will hopefully be forthcoming soon. I even learned how to extend the videos on my cell phone so that they're longer than 15 seconds. I don't know if any of them are post worthy, but we'll see.

I wanted to mention a discovery I made last week. On Thursday I was at the Salt Lake Wal-mart, wandering around as I awaited the time when I would be going to visit a few of my freshmen roommates for a little reunion. Well, Wal-mart has taken it upon themselves to sell some of their DVD's for $5. My guess is that they are replacing these boring, normal DVD's with the more exciting Blu-Ray ones. But really I don't care why they're doing it. All I know is that I benefit highly from these sales. And what, may you ask, did I find there? The Secret of NIMH. That's right. Good little Mrs. Frisby and the rats that she calls upon to help move her house, with the creepy owl and all. Well, I couldn't pass it up. I'll be honest, I giggled a little as I put it down on the counter. When I got back to Logan I told my friend Alise what I'd found. She giggled with excitement as well. And of course, we planned a movie night for the next night to watch it.

Three things popped out at me as we watched the movie. The first is obvious: It's an incredible movie, an incredible story. Who DOESN'T love a story where the Mom has the most astounding courage in order to save her children's lives; and where, as Alise pointed out, the good name of a man ends up saving his family's life, even after his death. Jonathan Brisby's name get's his wife in to see the Great Owl and the Rats of NIMH. He is the whole reason that they agree to help her in the first place. Actually the second thing that popped out at me is that in the movie their last name is "Brisby," whereas in the book it's "Frisby." Alise and I determined that the filmmakers might have thought "Frisby" would confuse the children somehow.

The last *POP* occurred when we turned the subtitles on to figure out if they were saying Brisby or Frisby. We left the subtitles on, and when it got to a part where they talked about the rats, I noticed for the first time that NIMH was in all capitals. Now, in my defense the last time I read the book was when I was about 9 or 10. So NIMH in capital letters wouldn't have meant much to me. However, now I am a semi-educated graduate student that has worked in the mental health field for 3 years or so. So now NIMH in call capital letters automatically equals (drumroll please) the National Institute of Mental Health. That's right. It was the first time I made the connection. I giggled some more, and Alise laughed that I was such a dork. Yea for new discoveries. I'm going to read the book again when the semester is over (or when I finish Peter Pan--my current guilty-pleasure book that I use to avoid homework when necessary) to see how many jabs at the National Institute of Mental Health there are in the book. Hopefully not too many. I wouldn't want a book that I loved so much as a kid to turn in to some giant backlash at an institution. It would lose all it's charm of being such a sweet story.