My Alice in Wonderland Quest is Half Over
But first something to make your day. It’s snippets of people caught on those cars cams that everyone has in Russia. God, I wish we had those here. I’d love what gets caught on them. In this case people are caught doing something good.
As a future little old lady I need to know what is up with old ladies and crossing streets? Why do they need help? Is it a sight issue? Either vision loss or depth of field? A dementia issue, perhaps? Why do they need help?? They look perfectly mobile. I don’t understand.
Now to my Alice in Wonderland quests. For my entire life I’ve been singing a few lines from a song I heard once when I was a child. Once! It was from a movie version of Alice in Wonderland, and singing the only two lines I remember and humming the rest has always made me happy. Finding this movie one of the first things I thought of when the internet finally started to catch on, and when IMDB was founded. I had faith that someday it would show up, or information about it, and I would finally be able to hear the song again, and also learn the rest of the words. I searched for it every few years or so. Last night, I found it.
But I need your help. I can’t understand some of the words. My problems start the second time she sings “I’m upside down, I’m downside up.” Then, “At last I’m having my way, the rules for what I ought and [ought to] are unimportant today. Life was slow when low was low and high was always high. Till I found the roof on the ground, a [something] in the sky. I’m upside down, I’m downside up, as far as I can foresee, this most incredible, [un-incredible] wonderland will be, upside down like you and me.”
I’m not sure about the words in the square brackets, and in one case I have no guesses at all. Please listen and see if you can discern them better than I! Also, thank you Sol Kaplan and Edward Eliscu. They wrote the music and lyrics. I wish I had found this song sooner. Sol and Edward died in 1990 and 1998. I could have sent them fan letters. Oh, I see someone named Henry Myers is credited as well. He was a writer so he must have contributed to the lyrics. Thank you Henry Myers.
The second half of my quest involves another Alice in Wonderland movie version. This one is going to be harder because I only remember a few seconds, but it was a few seconds that so captivated me I’ve been wanting to see them again ever since. For those who have actually read the books, there’s one where Alice follows a rabbit down a rabbit hole and one where she goes through a looking-glass. This movie version was made from the looking-glass story. Alice is playing with a small white kitten when a playing card come to life on a table. They talk a little, and then Alice goes through the looking-glass (aka mirror). I saw it around 1963, so it had to have been made before then.






