A day before Thanksgiving, I decided I wanted to watch The Wizard of Oz with my four-year-old grandson Brandon. Watching the Wizard of Oz was a Thanksgiving tradition when I was growing up which must be unimaginable to children who can watch anything at any time. Back in the day, however, the movie was broadcast every year at Thanksgiving and only then (as far as we knew). On Thanksgiving every morning we religiously watched the Thanksgiving Parade in New York City. In the evening as our parents and grandparents and their friends had cocktails and put a sumptious meal on the table, all the kids gathered in the one room with a TV -- my grandfather's room -- and watched Wizard of Oz. It never failed to delight, amaze, terrify...
In any event, fast-forward 50 years...I had bought what I thought was a DVD of the film and, with Brandon standing by, inserted it into the DVD player. Moments later I could hear the familiar tunes but no video appeared. Thinking I had a defective DVD, I called to my son, Brandon's father, to check it out. He surveyed the situation and in a typically condescending "Oh, Mom..." moment, he said "You bought the soundtrack, not the movie."
Totally aggravated, I immediately responded, "Bummer."
"Boumer," Brandon repeated, gazing up at me. His pronunciation was not perfect but he totally captured the mood of the moment. I broke into laughter. He broke into laughter. It was a real "bummer" moment. Watching him add a new word to his vocabulary -- one that connoted so much to a generation of Boomers was incandescent. He repeated the word several times and each time we laughed and laughed....
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