The Trees

When I was a little girl, The Wizard of Oz came on television once a year. By the time I was old enough to watch, CBS aired it, always around but not on my birthday. You’ll hear from many that the flying monkeys terrified them. Not me. I was always in bed crying by then. An earlier scene scared me so badly that I must have been ten or eleven years old before I could watch past this scene.

Which scene was the source of terror for me? The apple tree scene frightened me beyond belief. I was absolutely terrified of the smack-talking, apple-throwing trees. I would start crying and have to leave the room. As a child, I only enjoyed the Munchkinland scenes of the film, and after being scared to death by the trees a couple of years in a row, I would leave the room before the trees scene began. While my mom, dad, and sister watched the rest of the movie, I would read in my room.

It seems silly now, but when the trees tried to grab Dorothy, I couldn’t handle it. As an adult, I see the comedic aspects of that scene when I watch (all the way to the end), but when I was a young girl, the message I got from it was that I would never be safe anywhere, even the trees that I loved were capable of hurting me and appeared anxious to do it. There was a crabapple tree at my grandparents’ farm, but I wouldn’t go near it.