| Nadia B�rang�re's HoND Memoir Before HoND came out, my favorite Disney was Dumbo. Many of my favorite films have to do with being different...Bedknobs and Broomsticks, A Bug's Life, Phantom of the Opera...those things. I was born a premie. I also had (and still have) a big scar on my stomach where I had to be sewn up (For reasons unknown-well,to complicated-I 'came out' with no covering over my stomach...).Speaking of complicated, I won't even get started on 2 years of ventilator dependency. It took years to repair...surgery after surgery. By the time I was 12, I'd been through my last surgery.This one sealed it for good (Well,it was sealed all along, they just had to take out old stiches). Also, I had a trachiostomy once I came of the vent.I got rid of the trake when I was 4. As a kid I was picked on by everybody in school...both kids and teachers...all of those things being to long a story to tell. However, I've worked myself out of that "pity case" mode I was driven to. My parents brought me up normal...of course. But, I (and they) didn't know that I was to be picked on severly.It was normal bullying...calling me 'shrimp' (which hurt TWICE as bad, no matter how many times people told me to ignore it and make a joke out of it...like, piss on the 'sticks and stones' rhyme).If you've ever seen "Pride of the Yankees", you'll know what I mean by being picked on.It got to the point where conversations in Grade School were like this... Kid: Hi. Me: Hi. Kid: What's that thing on your neck? I felt paralyzed, like I had to answer in a long-winding way. I never did. Later, I'd only think..."ASK MY NAME FIRST!" Teachers were worse...they'd treat me like I was a 'special student' and treat me nasty because I was short...(gave me bad grades...told me I was just lazy because I couldn't do things like walk up a school staircase WITHOUT RUNNING OUT OF BREATH!). I can remember going to see HoND 3 times in the theater...the 1st time I learned about it, I thought..."What's going on? I've just seen Pocahontas for the 1st time and The Lion King for the 2nd time in one week!" I had. Little did I know, that in late June of 1996, when I was 8, my life would be changed...beyond life changing.I felt so sad about the hatred potrayed by Frollo because I'd never grown up with that (I grew up in a non-racial hatred world...when I learned about the American Civil War, it sounded so foreign to me). I totally understood the song "Out There". When I watched the scene when Quasimodo was pelted with food and tied down, I was chilled...I thought:"I've lived this!" As I watched, the romance element, the villain and the hero story, even the adventure elements faded away...the plot wasn't what got me first, it was how one identifies with the work itself. I saw my parrents in the Gargoyles...well, Laverne was the true parent figure (I can remember me smiling when she said: "We always said you were the cute one!" I ALWAYS smile at that.). Later, I learned that somebody my Dad worked with grew up with the same problem I did (diffrent way it happend for her, same school abuse).Mom told me how her teacher would look at her stomach and say "Why are you so fat?" or "Are you hidding something?". I soon learned that I had built up my own "Belltower".These days I don't "watch life go by without me". All I can say is that when I saw HoND, I was touched by "Heaven's Light". Lately, I've read the novel...I think it's the only book I've cried over...so, well, sad! The essence of Hugo's novel shines in the Disney version, despite the plot changes and the adaptation. No matter what, I'll always remember how HoND changed me. Back to Birthday Memoirs Back to Index |