The Golden ticket

“Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” was the first movie that ever scared me. When I tell people that, most of the time, they look at me like I’m crazy. “But Lauren, it’s a kid’s movie.” Occasionally, I come across someone that will look at me and say, “Girl, SAME!”

When I watch it now, from an adult’s perspective, I see the parallels and allegories like Augustus Gloop’s gluttony, Violet’s pride, and Verruca’s greed, but back then, those were all just kid traits. What I saw were horrible things happening to kids just like me: I loved to watch TV, I loved to eat chocolate, I had pitched a fit a time or two when I wanted something; I even chewed gum. In my mind, I was the poster child for a terrible thing to happen to me.

It never occurred to me that maybe I wasn’t as bad as those child caricatures of misbehavior. Maybe we all did those terrible things in moderation, with our undeveloped temporal lobes and our poor impulse control. I was so preoccupied with not becoming a blueberry that I missed what I think is the point. See, even our hero, Charlie, missed the bar with his theft of a fizzy lifting drink and floating adventure. He was even tested by the “competition,” as were all the other children. But the difference was, he did the right thing. Charlie owned up to his mistakes when tested. And in the end, he got himself a chocolate factory.

When we go through life, it’s astoundingly easy to focus on everything that we did wrong and wallow in how imperfect we are. That’s not the time to wallow, that’s the time to be glad. I’m not saying be glad that you lied, or said that cuss word, or said something harsh to someone because you were angry. I mean, be glad that you have a conscience. Be glad that you can recognize that you need to be corrected, because if you can realize that, then there is still hope. It means you can fix it.

I was one of those people that wallowed. I would beat myself up and berate myself with accusations and insults for something so small as mispronouncing a word. I still catch myself being hateful over the mistakes I have made. But I have to remind myself that I am not a Verruca, a Mike, a Violet or an Augustus. I’m a Charlie. I make mistakes, I mess up, but as long as I correct them and own up to them and do my best to repent of them, I won’t be a blueberry; I’ll own the factory. Sometimes it’s not what you did, it’s what you did about it, and that’s the golden ticket.

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