Hobbit Birthday!

[dodger_sister]

Happy Birthday to the lovely shirebound!!! Hope it was a wonderful day full of wonderful things, darling!




Since shirebound is a friend I made through my sister's Lord of the Rings fandom days, I thought I would now share a story about me, The Lord of the Rings and my sister. Knowing my sister the way you do, shirebound, I think this will amuse you.


When I was very little (maybe like seven) my mother let me watch those terrible cartoon movies of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I had awful reoccurring nightmares about both Gollum in the pool-cave and The Black Riders (with the menacing music that accompanied The Black Rider's approach in the cartoons). My mother apparently believed that because they were animated, they were appropriate for children - (The Secret of Nimh gave me nightmare too, as well as Watership Down - both animated, both scary as hell. Oh, the days before Adult Swim when parents thought all cartoons were kid-friendly).

Anyways, when I was about eleven, I tried reading The Hobbit for the first time. My sister had been bugging me for a couple of years to read it, so I picked it up. I got to the part with Gollum and the nightmares started up again and I couldn't finish it. Then when I was like twenty, I thought I would give it another try. I had some bad dreams, but I was determined to finish it and find out what happened to Bilbo Baggins.

The next year or so, I was at a theater waiting for Harry Potter to start (that's a whole nother story about how I randomly ended up seeing that movie because someone promised me popcorn) and at the beginning of the movie was a preview for Lord of the Rings. My cousin was all, "OMG, Lord of the Rings!!!!" and I was all, "Hey, look - Elijah Wood!" When I told my sister about it and how I thought it looked like a good movie, she said, "Listen, I forbid you to see the movie before you read the books. I know the Black Riders freak you out, but soldier through. If you read the books before the movies come out, I will buy you a DVD player."

Now I really wanted a DVD player, so I read the books. And I am so grateful she made me do it. The movies wouldn't have meant the same thing to me if she hadn't. My sister wasn't living in Michigan at the time and yet, the weekend Fellowship opened, I awoke on Saturday morning to my sister's face right in mine and her poking me and going, "It's time to go to The Shire!" She was headed to a friend's wedding that weekend and she took a lay-over in Michigan so she could take me to the movie.

See, older siblings boss you around a lot and always take the last brownie based on some rule I am sure they made up called 'seniority' - but then they do awesome things like this and it's all good.