Needed I'll Build You a Rainbow Therapy

I recently watched I'll Build You a Rainbow again. I say "again" because my parents inflicted the filmstrip on me some years ago. It was terrible. I bawled my eyes out. As far as tearjerkers go and from a kid's perspective, it ranks up there with Where the Red Fern Grows and Snoopy, Come Home. Because it devastated me as a child, I was honestly nervous to watch it again after all these years. But, my therapist suggested that it might actually help me get over it, so did it.

For those of you who have not seen it, I envy you that. While I do not recommend that you watch it and would certainly caution you not to show it to anyone under the age of twenty-five under any circumstances. Here it is. Be careful with it. It could be a powerful tool in the wrong hands--this much I learned from experience.

While my second viewing did nothing to change my mind about calling this filmstrip a tearjerker, it is not nearly as brutal as I remembered it. I fault most of this to the fact that there are number of common misconceptions of the filmstrip hanging around out there. Somehow my memory of the filmstrip had incorporated a number of these misconceptions. As a public service, let me clear up the record.

Fact: Jamie's mom is pretty great. She road bikes with him, spent time with him, and even was the football star of the Jamie's neighborhood.

Common Misconception: The narrator of the film never said, "Jamie's mom kicked butt--big time." The filmstrip does not assert that she only feeds Jamie vegetables when they are contained in jell-o or smothered in ranch dressing or contained in jell-o and then smothered in ranch dressing. And, she never beat up one of the neighbor's dads at a little league baseball game.

Fact: Jamie's mom call's him "Big J." She does this not because he is big but because he has a big heart.

Common Misconception: She does not call him "Big J" because he needed to have a cool motorbike gang name if Jamie was going to ride in the sidecar of her Harley.

Fact: The chorus of the theme music of the film strip goes like this:

I'll build you a rainbow, way up high above.
Send down a sunbeam, plumb full of love.
Sprinkle down raindrops, teardrops of joy.
I'll be happy as springtime, watching over my boy.

Common Misconception: The chorus does not go like this:

I'll build you a rainbow, ten thousand feet high.
Send you down crashing, from way up in the sky.
Listen to this music, teardrops will flow.
This is even worse than The Cipher in the Snow.

Fact: The secret that she tells Jamie at the end of the film is that families can be together forever.

Common Misconception: She does not tell Jamie her secret fried chicken recipe. Rather, she told that secret to her uncle--a Colonel with wee beady eyes and a smug look on his face. He then turned around made a fortune selling it to others (including Jamie) because the chicken recipe includes an addictive chemical that makes ya crave the it fortnightly.