Get A Clue

I come from not-quiet-during-the-movie people. We repeat lines, give encouragement, remark on interesting facts/costumes/discrepancies, and, most of all, make predictions about what we think will happen. We make other people crazy, including and especially Nick, but we would have us no other way. I was trying to trace the origin of this behavior in my own personal history and I think I found it yesterday. The hubby and I were discussing what books we enjoyed as children and what effect they had on us. A number of common titles got tossed around--by Tolkien, Ingalls Wilder, Lewis-- and then Nick asked if I had ever read the Encyclopedia Brown series and a little bell went off. I did read, and love, every page of those kid detective stories, and that is where my fascination with picking up the clues and figuring out the ending started. Not that I didn’t have the family trait before then (I know I’m at least a carrier because my son is a devout movie-talker, too), just that it found its expression once I had memorized the adventures of Encyclopedia and his friends. And now it’s second nature. If I can’t figure out the major plot points and the ending by halfway through any movie, I feel a bit frustrated. Unless they really surprise me, and then I have to give credit where credit is due. In Mary J. Fulton’s Detective Arthur in the Case of the Mysterious Stranger, Arthur gets a big surprise ending. That’s nice.

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