If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to have Johnny Depp get in your face to ask you what makes a raven like writing desk, you may consider checking out the new Alice in Wonderland in IMAX. After hearing of three players’ release from the team, the reality of the business of professional athletics hit home to some people - that is that no one is really secure on any team (and cuts will continue to happen over the next few weeks). So, a few of us took the afternoon to disengage from soccer in order to numb our minds and lose ourselves in one of our favorite childhood movies 2010 style ... and that’s when I realized I’m weirder than I thought. Kid movies speak to me.
Before yesterday, I’d never seen an IMAX film. It’s a bit like sitting inside a magic-eye picture ... except this one is a whole lot louder and works with a lot less effort. Despite my slight fear that I could possibly go deaf by the movie’s end, I was completely enamored at the way the projection makes you feel like you can actually touch the characters (Warning: This is just technology at its best. You can’t actually smack Johnny Depp in the hind side. I tried. Multiple times). Not to mention, the glasses you must wear so your eyes can open to the wildly-lucid and bold pop-up effects were sexy enough to give even a rhinoceros confidence enough to step up his game and start pimpin’ the giraffes. That’s why the girls look so hot in that picture up there.
Anyway, the team hasn’t gotten a huge chance to get to know one another off the field yet, so it was nice to get a few of us in a different setting. With popcorn in hand (don’t tell Robbie), we had our first semi-bonding experience. The more the movie got rolling, the more I began thinking (which can get scary).
This young Alice - whose lot in life is to refuse the predestined paths chosen for her by caste and family - was extremely self-aware even in childhood. She wasn’t growing into the mold of her class and gender, but rather, ends up shattering that in effort to create her own future. It made me consider how the steps taken by many of us and those wonderful trailblazing women that came before us clash slightly with the norms of how young women should live and what goals they should seek. Even from the prospective of this team alone: Teammate Tracy Hamm was a complete tomboy as a kid (which is a great story in and of itself and will certainly be told in the near future), as were the lot of us. Allison Witworth found it more exhilarating to compete against boys on the playground as a kid than play hopscotch with the girls. And I’m sure most of us were told repeatedly that soccer and sport in general was a waste of time for us much past adolescence, as we would never be radical or talented enough to become someone through it.
Somehow we all managed to look past what was normal and keep doing what made us happy. Even so, my question is much like Alice’s: Who keeps deciding what is normal? To that point, I’d like to say this to whoever those people may be: look how many people have proved you wrong.
Now, don’t misunderstand. This isn’t to to say that the only way to happiness is to forget the norms to society and to go scampering off into the sunset while forgetting reality in pursuit of a lifetime filled with eating bonbons. I’m not one to raise debate and am not nearly intelligent enough to create that sort of battle even if I wanted to. Rather, my point is that some people’s goals fall outside what others may find “normal.” With that, someone somewhere is always going to think you’re crazy. When that happens, take it as a compliment because normal is boring. Don’t believe me? Take it from Alice’s father in the movie when the two discussed her sanity. He lovingly said to her, “You’re absolutely mad. But, I’ll tell you a secret, all the best people are.”
Perhaps it should be a red flag that I gained a little perspective from a movie likely created after a bunch of dudes ate enough mushrooms (I’m not talking shiitake here) to make the Greatful Dead seem straight-edge. But, the truth is, I’d rather be completely mad and happy than utterly boring and depressed.
