the jungle book

Your dad has a collection of kids movies. Most of the Disney ones, but also a lot of others. I'm sure I was exposed to the Disney stuff at some point, but most of it I don't remember. I claim to have never seen most of them, but I'm really not sure. The picture below was taken in 1978 at Disneyland. Your Uncles Dave (left) and Dan (right) are beside me. Note the Star Wars t-shirt. Also note the Wesson oil patch on my outfit. Such class.



At any rate, as we were watching the Junglebook last night it finally occurred to me that the bear in the movie, Baloo, is the same bear I'd been looking at in that family picture all these years. It's kind of odd to have to translate a cartoon to reality and then back again to a cartoon. He was real to me in the picture, not as a character in an animated film!

A few months back I found a big picture book version of this story in German at a thrift store. Das Dschungelbuch... I realized it did me little good, so I gave it to my lunchtime learning German instructor. He and his German born wife just had a baby girl, so I thought they might make actual use of it (versus my use, which would be made up pronunciation). I did make a point of buying foreign language kids books when I travelled in my 20's. Maybe someday we'll actually get to look at them together!