It's the time of your life, so live it well

Friday night we watched A Bug's Life. And at long last I realised why practically the only line that stuck with me from the whole movie was the line 'It's the time...of your life....so live it well!' Aside from the fact that that line comes from the only song in the whole movie, that line is practically the only line of the whole song. Not only that, but the song is played only during the credits! How did I pick it up and remember it after all these years? Because it played during the outtakes, of course, and there is nothing like animated outtakes! I must have watched them and the song lodged in my head without my noticing. No wonder, as it repeats again and again, which is not a problem as it has a very catchy tune. But it all makes sense now, like when I watched The Princess Bride again after not having seen it for maybe ten years after it came out in, when was it, 1987? For many, many years later, before the whole movie slipped from my memory into foggy oblivion, the only line I could remember was the classic 'Hello...' (If you need me to finish that sentence for you, my friend, there are serious holes in your life. Gaping chasms in your heart that need to be filled.) And I could never understand why that was the only line I could remember. 'Boy,' thought my mature fifteen-year-old-self, 'I must have been really morbid back then, to remember a line about killing and dying!' And then - gladsome day! - I watched it again at long last (but not for the last time!) and it finally dawned on my why it had made such an impression on my impressionable seven-year-old-self: because he says it like twelve times in once scene alone!

I wonder how many more of these 'Aha!' experiences are lurking around corners just waiting to be discovered. There is an excellent line in one of the Father Brown stories, which I wish I could find and copy down exactly, but I'm not due to go on another Father Brown kick for awhile yet and I'd have to read through the complete omnibus to track it down, but it goes something like this: 'All at once a window in his mind opened and shed light on something which he realised, quite suddenly, that he had known all along.'