Hodgepodge

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

During the summer, OWTK answered The Lovely Mrs. Davis’ question “What childhood favorite are you eager to share with your child/children”. Our response: Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the 1968 film starring a young Dick Van Dyke.

A couple months ago I finally purchased the Special Edition DVD of Chitty Chitty and just recently sat down with our girl to watch it. She immediately fell in love, head over heels, with the movie. Even the nasty child catcher, the goofy big-nosed bad guy who appears about halfway in to the picture, did not deter nor hinder her enjoyment of this silly story about one magical car.

She had some prior knowledge of Chitty going in. In the hallway leading to the bedrooms, we have a framed poster from the London production of Chitty Chitty that The Mrs. and I attended a year before our little one was born. As an infant we would walk by the glossy image of Chitty in full flight and sing the title track while we bounced her up and down. We would also sing Truly Scrumptious, substituting Truly with her name. She would, and still does, turn a little red in the face upon realizing that we are singing about her, specifically how much we love her (“…our hearts beat so unruly because we love you Truly, honest Truly we do”).

Watching the film with her now, we could tell that she recognized the melodies (I guess we did not butcher the tunes THAT bad!) from the start and picked up the lyrics in no time.

Because she has taken such an immediate and strong liking to the music of Chitty Chitty, I bought the soundtrack on iTunes last night. The look on her face when I slipped this into the car cd player this evening was terrific – the jaw dropping giddy reaction was exactly what I was going for!

OWTK had previously discussed the gift of sharing a childhood favorite with your kids in our holiday gift guide. It Truly is a special thing to do.

Jeff

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