Goodbye Annie - the end of an eraFine art, games, and movie reviews.

As a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I loved to read the Sunday comics -- one of my favorite comic strips was "Little Orphan Annie."  At some point, I'm not exactly sure when, the name was  changed and while she was still an orphan, the comic strip became known simply as "Annie."
 
At age 8 or 9 I used to envy the exciting life that Little Orphan Annie seemed to lead.  I was too young to pick up the political nuances of the author, instead I focused on Annie's relationship with her dog Sandy and her never ending search for Daddy Warbucks.  Annie had a dog that understood every word she spoke and who obeyed her without question.  I also had a dog; his name was Skippy and I loved him dearly, however, I knew in my heart that he was neither as smart nor as understanding as Sandy.  In fact, when I tried to walk Skippy without a leash, as Annie was able to do without difficulty, he would always dash off to explore the neighborhood on his own.  I would run after him but could never catch him, and at some point he would get hungry and return home to eat. 
 
I used to daydream of the possibility of running away to a life of adventure similar to Annie's, but I, of course,  always knew that the dream was nothing more than a game of pretend.  My own parents were a lot less glamorous than Daddy Warbucks, but I had a real Mommy and Daddy who loved me and, consequently, I didn't need to search for a parent substitute.  In addition, Skippy hardly ever understood what I wanted him to do and had no interest in listening to anything I said, so I well understood that running away with him was not very realistic.  Nevertheless, reading about Annie's adventures planted an important seed in a little girl's mind:  In a man's world, where girls were taught to look to the men in their lives to take care of them, Annie was well able to take care of herself.  Yes, Daddy Warbucks would show up here and there to rescue her, but her daily life involved danger and harrowing experiences that she and Sandy would, through their own cunning, manage  to survive.
 
Fortunately, young girls today have a variety of realistic role models to look up to and they don't need an improbable comic strip to show them their possibilities.  It's also very likely that Annie's writers had no intention of having her serve as a role model for little girls and never realized her true value in that regard.  It is the end of an era, time to say goodbye.  The show "Annie" with all the same characters and wonderful music is returning to Broadway in the not too distant future.  In that sense, Annie is here forever; however, time marches on and evolution is presumably good, but there still remains a bit of nostalgia left for the past and the dreams of a little girl.