Horton Hears a Who!

Yesterday was an unusual day.  Very blustery wind, branches and twigs littering the roads...  On my way to my father's house to take him to the hospital for tests, a huge tree had just uprooted and was blocking the whole highway.  A spur-of-the-moment detour took me with a long line of cars and tractor trailer trucks up and down hills and valleys along endlessly winding back roads until we came out on another highway finally leading in the right direction.  The scenery was amazing and it only made me a little bit late.

The labs weren't very busy at the hospital so Dad was done with his tests earlier than we had anticipated.  He held up pretty well for a CAT-scan, Cardiac-Echo Test and pulmonary function tests - his allergist is concerned about his more pronounced wheezing of late, and poor lung function during an office visit.  The hardest part of the expedition was getting him in and out of the car and the wheelchair.

When we got back to the house Dad, Beverly and I settled down to watch a DVD, Horton Hears a Who!  We loved Dr. Seuss as children, and this story was Beverly's favorite.  The movie received good critical reviews, so we decided to check it out.  As expected, it didn't follow the book exactly.  I was glad baby kangaroo was portrayed sympathetic to Horton in the movie - couldn't stand that little copy-cat in the book.  ;)  But the examination of perceptions is what stood out the most to me.  The kangaroo's pronouncements remind me of things my father used to say to us as we were growing up and wanted to believe in things we perceived but he couldn't see or hear.

"Why, that speck is as small as the head of a pin.  A person on that?...  Why, there has never been!"
"I think you're a fool!  You're the biggest blame fool in the Jungle of Nool!"
"Humpf!  For almost two days now you've run wild and insisted on chatting with persons who've never existed."
"I'm here to state that your silly nonsensical game is all through!"
"All I heard was the breeze, and the faint sound of wind through the far-distant trees.  I heard no small voices.  And you didn't either."

My father will probably never believe in magic or mystery or anyone unseen, but he's a good man, kind-hearted to a fault with a great sense of humor and irony.  He had the technicians laughing at his one-liners at the hospital.  Every time I looked at him during the movie to see if he was getting a point made in the movie, he was dozing.  (Not surprising after his exhausting morning...)  But Beverly and I thoroughly enjoyed our little visit to Dr. Seuss's world, where nonsense illustrates very deep truths.

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.  Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.
~ Theodore Geisel  (Dr. Seuss)