This post is not about the Haley Mills movie but it makes for a nicer blog post title than what this is really about: my Holocaust story. This memory came to mind when P.S. Susan and I recently attended the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival's screening of "Defiant Requiem," a documentary film about the brave prisoners of Theresienstadt concentration camp. (http://defiantrequiemfilm.com). Back in 1981 Tony and I were living in Ambler, PA. a bedroom community just north of Philadelphia. (Ambler also happens to be where they filmed the 1966 movie....see http://www.netreach.net/~sixofone/ttwa.htm ) Tony was working for Texas Instruments and I was working various jobs through a temp agency. We were pre-nesters--no children yet-- living in a charming old (oxymoron?) apartment that was simple but comfortable and convenient to everything. One weekend my college friend-turned-actress Valinda came to visit from NYC. As soon as she arrived we got started talking non-stop and ending up in an in-depth discussion of the Holocaust: concentration camps, gas chambers and Anne Frank. To this day we don't know what triggered that subject, but after a few hours I decided I should probably get dinner started before Tony got home.... The gas oven in the apartment required igniting the pilot light before you could set the temp. (told you this was an old apt.) Still chatting, deep in Hitler-atrocities, I turned on the gas and then went over to get the matches on the counter. Big mistake. I don't think anyone had ever told me the exact proper order of lighting a gas fire...
WHOOOOMPH. (I do believe my heart stopped). With my eyes tightly clenched I timidly asked,
"Valinda? My eyebrows. Do I have any eyebrows?"
Silence.
"Yes.Yes. Don't panic. You have your eyebrows. But....you need to go look in the mirror..."
I looked like I was wearing a halo of brown baby's breath. The whole top layer of my hair was singed into ash. However, Valinda was right, my eyebrows were untouched, the burnt smell was horrible and we were....relieved but exhausted. When we thought about the "couldas" --as in I coulda burnt the whole building down--- we agreed the angels were watching over us that afternoon.
This past weekend I saw the film "Beasts of the Southern Wild." There were no parts of the movie I would consider humorous but I actually laughed out loud when li'l Hushpuppy pulls out a football helmet--or was it a hockey mask--from the freezer(!) and puts it on her face before she lights up the kitchen stove with a blow torch. WHOOOOMPH. Despite the fact (spoiler alert) that she burns the place down, I think that plucky kid was on to something.
