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I've been wanting to tell this story for a week and a half.

Saturday the 15th of March we had a cool learning experience.

The boys were gone. Kirby was at work, and Marty had gone to thrift stores
with friends (which turned into being gone for hours, which was okay).

Keith came downstairs and said "Holly's watching a movie in Spanish." Keith
and I were watching some movie, I forget what, and eating in the den, and
just hanging out.

Holly came down and said with some determination that she wanted me to find
out what movie she had just watched. She said she had written part of the
name down but couldn't get it all, and would like for me to find it on video
and rent it.

She had written down: Cine de las...

Ooops. "Holly, that's 'Movie of the...'."

We laughed, but she was bummed.

We used to always get TV guide, but quit a few years ago. So I got online to
see if I could find the schedule. Couldn't. Not for either Spanish-language
channel here.

It was 9:00 Saturday night, and I figured we could go to the store and look
in the TV Guide. Keith thought that was a weird thing to do, but he's used
to us. I said I hoped we could find it on DVD with English subtitles, maybe.

So we went to John Brooks, a little grocery just 1/4 mile away. They were
all out of TV Guide.

We went to Raley's, half a mile away. They were almost out of TV Guide but
we found one.

These stations are both UHF, so you can't count on what channel they'll come
in on and what she was getting on her TV wasn't what was in the book.

There were two movies in Spanish which had started at 7:00. One was about
travellers to the Australian outback who meet a crazy dangerous guy in the
desert, as far as I could tell, reading what Spanish I could read.

That wasn't it, she said.

The other was called "Daniel el Travieso." I had no idea about "travieso,"
but at least we had a likely movie. "Was his name Daniel?" I asked,
pronouncing it in Spanish.

YES!

Okay. I was reading through the TV-Guide blurb, and all I could tell was it
was a little kid who did blah blah, I didn't know what, to his neighbor Mr.
Wilson. Played by Walter Matthau.

"Holly! This is 'Dennis the Menace!'"

"What's that?"

"It's an American movie. Used to be a comic in the newspaper. Come on!"

Between Raley's and our house was Hollywood Video. Holly was pretty
skeptical about my whole theory, but I found the box, showed her the picture,
and she said yes, that was the one.

Big Mystery solved, and I didn't even have to drive across town to find a
video store with a big section of Mexican cowboy movies and comedies to try
to look through in Spanish alphabetical order (though "D" for Daniel would
have been okay).

Holly has been watching Back to the Future movies lots of late, and
Christopher Lloyd and Lea Thompson are both in Dennis the Menace and the
others as well.

For Holly, I paid attention to her and produced what she wanted within an
hour. That can't always happen, so I'm glad I did. And I got to show her an
example of creative use of reference materials. <g>

Sandra

nellebelle

Cool story!

Mary Ellen


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