Being an only child, and always pretty much the definition of a loner, I often idealized fictional characters as perfect potential best friends.
I was pretty much known for this in my household, sometimes even going so far as to name a doll or stuffed animal after my favorite character of the moment, and treat them/speak of them as if they were an actual friend. The “friend” of the moment could potentially change at any time, some lasting for only a few days, others for months at a time.
But I don’t think there was ever a character I wanted so badly for a BFF, as I did Dani Dennison.
I know I’ve mentioned several times that I was seven years old the first time I saw Hocus Pocus, and Dani is, of course, eight in the movie, so having a character so close to my own age, in a movie about something so dear to my heart, automatically put her on my fictional-best-friend radar. I remember being truly in awe of Dani the first time I watched the movie; how confident she was, and how ready for adventure. I think I saw in her, everything that I wished I could be at the time. I was so shy and timid I could barely even imagine myself taking control of any situation the way Dani did, or being able to face something as treacherous as the Sanderson Sisters. Despite her initial reluctance to visit the Sanderson house, Dani stays pretty cool and level-headed throughout the whole ordeal in a way that no normal eight-year-old that I knew probably could. Perhaps this was when it really started hitting me, how strange it was that I loved Halloween yet got so spooked by everything even potentially scary, and I wished I could be more like Dani instead.
I also put a lot of focus onto the things that Dani and I had in common, such as our close ages, and the fact that we both seemed to love cats and Halloween. I idolized her so much that I made sure to dress like a witch the following Halloween...I actually have a vivid memory of settling on a Sleeping Beauty costume in WalMart one evening, then tossing it aside when I turned a corner and saw a witch costume in my size, insisting that I must have it in order to “be like Dani”, and asking if I looked enough like her throughout the actual night of Halloween. This was, notably, the Halloween after I had just turned eight.
I distinctly remember one night, having a dream in which Dani and I were having a play date together. I have a pretty distinct memory of the dream taking place in the home of my aunt and uncle, but no other kids were there. I don’t remember much about the actual events of the dream, but I remember that Dani looked exactly as she did in the movie, witch costume and all, and in hindsight it was kind of funny that I wanted to be her friend so badly, yet couldn’t seem to picture her as an actual person, living a life that didn’t consist perpetually of fighting a coven of witches on Halloween night. It’s funny how we perceive characters like that...As an adult I sometimes find myself wondering what Dani and Max were like on, say, just some random Tuesday afternoon, but as a child, all that mattered to me was that Dani loved Halloween...and had adventures on Halloween.
I remember waking up the morning after that dream, devastated that I hadn’t actually met and played with Dani Dennison. I believe the first words out of my mouth that morning were, “Is it possible to make myself have the same dream tonight as last night?” And when my mother asked me what I meant, I said something about how I wanted to keep “playing with Dani”, and she thought I meant some boy in my class! (Side note: I did actually have a tiny crush on a boy named Danny in second grade, and my mother always seemed to have a silly hope that I would end up with a Danny, since that is my father’s name, and she often went by “Kate”, short for Kathleen.) Sadly, I can’t ever recall dreaming about Dani, or much of anything to do with Hocus Pocus, ever again.
I am hoping, though, that Dani will appear in the upcoming sequel. I’m interested to see if she’s still someone I’d like to hang out with. I have to say, I did enjoy her small role in the book sequel, as she reminded me quite a bit of my Aunt Trish and how we were together when I was a kid.
What inspired me to talk about all of this today? Well, Spirit Halloween released a Funko Pop figure of Dani and Binx, and I just couldn’t help but think it was funny to have a physical representation of my childhood dream BFF.
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