When the Screen Glowed Magic—and Safety: A 1950s Childhood Revisited
I have to confess, I was glad to get on board my recent
flight from Tel Aviv to Newark Airport. I hadn’t slept well over the past month
in Jerusalem. I was still walking around
on the streets or riding the bus with a smile on my face but I could not even
take a nap during the day.
Like others, in the face of the war with Hamas, the fate of our hostages being unknown, the attempted coup by the hostage families, incoming rocket and missile alerts, I think I have to recognize it all got to me.
So, I plopped down into my seat, fastened the seat belt, laughed along with Lior Szuchard as he told us to keep our seatbelts “fas-tend” when the “fas-tend seatbelts light came on.
I skipped my usual booze drink when offered by the flight
attendant, I just wanted to wind down. I flicked the screen to see the list of
movies and started to go from screen to screen looking for something that would
get me through the flight. And there it was, Walt Disney’s Snow White.
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The Lone Ranger and Silver |
When the credits roll now, I sometimes ache for that unquestioned safety. Yet mostly I feel gratitude. I was lucky to be shaped in an era whose stories taught me to hope, to dream, and to trust that a masked man, a boy in a cape, or even an ordinary kid could make a difference.
Well, that's what I have to say. Stephen M. Flatow