I finally bit the bullet, and watched a movie that has haunted me since I saw it in 1959, when I was eleven years old. To say that the movie traumatized me is too dramatic: there was nothing in it inappropriate for a child to see or hear. But in the 1950’s it was customary for childrens’ birthday parties to include going to a movie, and I sat through Disney’s The Shaggy Dog four times. When my family moved to Hawaii, we stayed for our first few nights on the Hickam Air Force base. I was thrilled to learn that the base had a movie theater, less thrilled to learn that The Shaggy Dog was showing there. While my older brother took my younger sisters to see it, I was spared a fifth viewing, but troubled by the notion that the film had followed me halfway across the Pacific Ocean.
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