Humor: My chills are alive again with The Sound of Music

My chills are alive again with The Sound of Music

"Look at me, daddy," said Jack, throwing a white towel over his head when he hopped out of the bath the other day. "I’m a nun."

A nun? Well, um, yes, I could see the resemblance. That is, apart from an absence of clothes and some three-year-old male accessories that I never imagined nuns had.

Nuns of my childhood all wore habits on their head.

And Jack, who has watched countless screenings of The Sound of Music in our lounge room over the past six months, has no concept of modern habit-less nuns. As far as he is concerned, all nuns walk around with something resembling towels on their heads.

I knew this would happen.
It’s one of the fears of fatherhood, isn’t it?
Some fathers dread the day their son might confess to them that they bat for the opposition or eat quiche or vote conservative.
My fear has always revolved around nuns.

My wife Katherine thinks I am over-reacting. She dismisses it as a fad and says Jack will grow out of it. Next week, she says, he’ll probably put a bucket on his head and declare he’s Ned Kelly. I never did like The Sound of Music. Admittedly, it won a bunch of Academy Awards in 1965. Starring Julie Andrews as Sister Maria, it is the story of a spirited Austrian trainee nun who goes to work, by order of the Mother Superior, as a nanny for Baron Von Trapp’s seven children. If you like sugary love stories, nuns and Austrian mountain scenery - plus some memorable songs from Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein - you might rate The Sound of Music as a movie classic.

I do not think it is half as good, however, as Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines.

That was the movie I was supposed to see in 1966, only my two older sisters decided, at the last minute, like outside the cinema, to watch The Sound of Music instead. What could I do? I was seven. I was outranked, outflanked and outvoted.

Worse still, I went to a little Catholic primary school and the nuns there obviously thought The Sound of Music was the best thing since the Ascension.
The head nun, who also coached our school football team and taught me everything I know about drop-punting, played the piano and was very keen to turn us pupils into a choral unit to rival the Von Trapp Singers.
We had to learn all the songs - Do-Re-Mi, Edelweiss, The Lonely Goat Herd and all the rest.

I should be grateful. Thanks to the nuns, I acquired singing skills to rival my footballing skills. Okay, I did retire hurt from the game in grade four but I could have been a champion if I had been blessed with more height, more speed, better motor skills, better eyesight, greater motivation and less desire for self-preservation.

But, hey, I never carry grudges. The nuns went their way and I went mine.

Unfortunately, the tunes stayed with me. You know how it is? Other, cooler, people hum Beethoven or break into some a catchy Spice Girls tune when things get tense in the office. My workmates look at me oddly when I forget where I am and start singing about My Favourite Things.

Anyway, I have learnt to cope.

Or I had until the video of The Sound of Music, digitally remastered for superior sound and music quality, found its way into our home.

I really thought I could handle all that emotional baggage now that I am older and wiser.

Jack quickly learnt to love the video, and that was the important thing. He knows all the songs now, and sometimes uses lines directly from the movie script, like "I’m not finished yet!" to chastise us.

We often hear him through his bedroom monitor, singing himself to sleep with Do-Re-Mi.

And he has been captivated by the nuns.

"I love the nuns," he confessed when he was still two.

Then, the other day, he hopped out of the bath, threw the white towel over his head, and declared he was a nun.

Well, what do you say?

Boys can’t be nuns?

Jack’s favourite line of questioning to everything at the moment is "why" and I am not sure we could adequately answer that one.

Besides, I believe in equal rights. I think boys, in this day and age, should be allowed to do anything that girls can do.

But why, oh why, a nun?

If only he had seen Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines instead of The Sound Of Music. I could have had a budding aviator on my hands.

©June 14, 1999 John Martin. All Rights Reserved

NB: I called this site Dunno because I kept drawing a blank when I had to put a name to it