Spoilers

For Christmas that year, my mom bought me the book version. I treasured it and still 

have it to this very day, even though my dog, Casey, did take a big ol' chomp out of the corner. 

What can I say, he was a chewer.

Back in the fall of 1965, I went with my neighbor, Vickie Terry, to see Mary Poppins in the theater.

I was six years old.

This wasn't the first time I'd been to a movie - I'd seen One Hundred and One Dalmatians in a proper theater when I was three, though my mom reports that I spent most of the movie asking her to take me for a drink of water, and then enjoying the long, slow climb up the wide, carpeted stairway at the majestic old Michigan Theater rather than getting the wits scared out of me as Cruella de Vil attempted to kill puppies. I'd also been to the drive-in once or twice, though that mostly consisted of wrestling my brothers for the bag of homemade popcorn and struggling to see the movie out the front window of the car.

But this was the first time I'd been invited to a movie by a friend.

Oh, those the double page color illustrations! Can't you just imagine the blast of wind that would send these nannies gusting off into the skies over London?

And it was the first time I'd been to see Mary Poppins.

Now back in those days, in small town America, popular movies blew in and out of town like the wind. A successful original run might last a month or two, then maybe six months later, that movie would pop back up again for a second run, and play for another few weeks. Immensely popular movies, like Gone With The Wind or Fantasia, returned year in and year out.

By the time I saw it, Mary Poppins was on her third run.

Now, I had never seen the movie before, but boy, oh boy, had I heard about it.

I'd watched countless previews and teasers on the weekly Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color TV show.

We'd been singing the songs from the movie in my music class at school for months.

But more than anything else, my friends had told me all about it.

Yes, many of my lucky schoolmates had caught a first or second run showing of this wildly popular movie, and countless recesses and lunch hours been devoted to their recounting endless details of the show. I'd heard about the talking parrot on the umbrella handle, the toys flying around the nursery, the sidewalk paintings at the park, and the carousel horses galloping off the merry-go-round and cavorting off into the countryside.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. 

What a perfect word for second graders to use in nearly every situation. And we did.

My best friend, Marilyn, had also seen the movie. She introduced to the Banks' parents' peculiarities - what's a suffragette, anyway? - and puzzled with me over Mary's relationship with the kooky chimney sweep and rooftop dancer, Bert. Was he her boyfriend? Her husband? Her brother? And what about the mean men at the bank who end up laughing so hard that the oldest one dies? Could that actually happen to a person?

Suffice it to say, by the time I sat down in my red velvet seat with Vickie and her mom, I was completely familiar with the story that was finally about to unfold in front of my eyes. I enjoyed every minute even as I anticipated every plot twist and knew exactly how the movie would end.

In today's vernacular, my Mary Poppins movie-going experience had been utterly and completely spoiled.

But with the basics under my belt before the movie began, my six-year-old mind was able to wrap itself around every magical detail and colorful character I saw. Rather than feeling confused or overwhelmed, I loved every single minute of the show.

* * * * *

This weekend, as the highly anticipated Avengers: Endgame and Game Of Thrones' The Long Night episode both hit screens for the first time, there has been a lot of chatter online about spoilers. 

To sum up the conundrum, when it comes to spoilers, there are two kinds of people: those who watch new releases right away and want to talk about what they've seen, and those who expect the world to maintain radio silence till they get a chance to watch.

Honestly, I don't get the fuss about spoilers. Most storytelling is fairly predictable - The Sixth Sense, Inception, and several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation notwithstanding - and it doesn't take a crystal ball to predict that the Avengers are going to use time travel to prevent Thanos from accumulating the Infinity Stones and thereby killing half the population of the universe, including many Avengers. Some way or another, the good guys will ultimately kill the bad guy, rewrite time, and bring all the dead folks back to life. I expect most of the Avengers to recover, except for a few whose actors' contracts were not renegotiated. 

Similarly, anyone who's been with Game of Thrones can safely assume that most of our heroes - Jon and Dany, for sure - are likely to survive the culminating battle against the Army of the Dead and one way or another, take the next step on the way to the Iron Throne. And since killing the Night King means certain death for the entire army, it seems logical to aim for his jugular. Sure, there are many secondary details to be resolved and Lord knows the GOT writers love to upset expectations and knock off important characters. But harming either Jon or Dany would be like killing Frodo and Sam on their way back from Mordor to the Shire, and it's a safe bet that's not happening. 

To be perfectly honest, I am fine knowing the key plot points of a movie that I'm about to watch. With those hand holds in place, I can better appreciate the richness of the characters, the details of the setting, the subtleties of the actors' performances. A movie takes on more texture and dimension, and I can more deeply enjoy every aspect of the artistic creation.

Just like that time I saw Mary Poppins.