Marley and Me

Over break my mom and I took my two oldest girls to see Marley and Me in the theater. We had been waiting a while for this since our weather has been snowy and icy lately. Two summer ago I had read the junior novel Marley, a Dog Like No Other over various car trips we had taken as a family. Usually the car ride wasn't extremely long, but we all liked hearing about Marley and the crazy stuff he would do. We also had just said goodbye to our dog, Bernie, a St. Bernard who was as loveable as Marley and equally as badly behaved. So we laughed while we read. Somehow I think my girls forgot the sad ending Marley would have. I reminded them before the movie started that Marley was probably going to die at the end since he was old and his body was wearing out. The movie was sad. Marley's dying is drug out to generate the maximum amount of audience tears possible. At one point my middle daughter looked a little sad about this, but she was quickly cheered by the news I whispered to her that the Grogan family would soon get a new puppy. The movie was good....maybe a bit more romantic than I was expecting. A teacher was hoping for Marley's DVD release, but after telling him of the content it was easy to see this is not a classroom viewing type of story. That same teacher finished reading the junior novel just two days ago to his class. As we all know the story is sad and one of his students ended up crying hysterically over Marley's death. When he took her into the hall to talk to her and make sure she was OK she replied, "It's OK. I'm just an emotional girl." The next class read aloud he began that day was Sounder. After that he is going to be reading Stone Fox. I think this tenderhearted student should invest in some kleenex for the next few weeks.