12 : Flowers in the Attic

 

Saturday, November 21,1987

Friendly Center, Greensboro, North Carolina

with: Katie, Christie, and Leslie

During these forty days of Lent, I am forced to take a good look at myself.  Therefore, this memory is dedicated to the Golden Raspberry award.  I love the Razzies just as much as the Oscars, and this movie...won several.  

Just about any female growing up in the 80s knew of the Flowers in the Attic series-there were five books in total.  This series was our Twilight Saga.  We all just had to read them-and we couldn't stop reading them.  We had them in the cafeteria, we had them in the bus seats. We had them at the pool.  We had them in airports on the way home to the United States from Malaga, Spain. 

BUT unlike Edward and Bella and their sweet wedding, this stuff was completely inappropriate. The gist: four kids, two brothers and two sisters, are locked in a room of a mansion with only the attic to play in.  The only people they see on a regular basis are their spoiled rotten mother and their over the top, sadistically Christian, Grandmother.  The older brother and sister are hitting puberty and no one else is around, so we can see where this is going.  The next thing you know, kids all over America don't want to go over the river and through the woods to Grandma's house and brothers and sisters avoid being in the same room together like the plague. Sigh....good stuff.

I can still see the Language Arts classroom in 8th grade during "Poster book report week"  It was plastered in those books-I feel sorry for all the boys that had to sit through those presentations. Ugh.  The worst part was probably when someone tried to say that Garden of Shadows was book number one.  I was the purist screaming read them in the order she wrote them...The author, V.C. Andrews, had a special formula for her books.  I'll call it the witch explains it at the end formula.   The first four books were about how horrible the grandmother was.  The last one was told in the point of view of the grandmother-YOU CAN'T READ THAT FIRST!  Duh...why bother reading the other four?

Every now and then someone had a mom that was well informed as to what us girls were up to and put a stop to it.  Jennie Blackwood had one such mother.  Jennie didn't cuss-she didn't know what a couple of the words meant. Most girls that weren't allowed to read them just listened to those that did retell the plots during Girl Scouts.  But that wasn't enough for Jennie-Oh no, she took my copy and hid it in her room. Big surprise-her mother found it.  

So one day, in the fifth grade,  I was sitting at my desk, doing my science workbook.  All of a sudden, instead of  the life cycle of a frog, I'm staring at a blonde chick looking out an attic window.  

I look up, and there is Ms. B, smiling sweetly. 

 "That belongs to you, Dear." uh-oh...I got a Dear....

"Thanks!" I said quickly as I put the book inside my desk and got back to my pollywogs.

 I hope I didn't get her into too much trouble over that, but anything Jennie did for the rest of her life was the direct result of Page Newsom loaning her a copy of Flowers in the Attic.  I just know it.

The movie came out in seventh grade and I went with my little buddies. We had read the books in the right order.

Even at age thirteen, I knew it was horrible.  I mean seriously,  it earned every single Razzie it received. But what made this trip to the movies good was the audience going off and screaming at the screen. "Smother him with a pillow!"  "Knock her out!"  If you ever need an evil old lady, you can always count on Louise Fletcher.  Still love Nurse Ratched....

I want to watch the movie again and read them all over again....can you imagine the midnight theme parties for this stuff????

I'm going over to the Guilford, No the MADISON library and checking these babies out....who can I get in trouble for reading it now????