What Am I Doing Here?

Most things start out with a list: such as 'to do', 'how to', etc. and so does this. After having been 'nominated' to take part in several different social media 10 Days - 10 whatever shenanigans during the COVID-19 'lock-down' I decided to try and start one of my own. I came up with "Name the Top 10 Influential Movies from your Childhood.". Now that's a fairly easy list for most people but not me. I've always got to make it difficult. Not difficult, actually - just more precise. 
If I just made a list of every movie I've ever seen the list would be unbelievable to most people. Maybe not to your average movie fan, I suppose. But that really wouldn't give me the metric I was looking for: Movies that I saw and influenced me in some manner when I was a child. The only movies that would be put on the list were those that I have a memory of seeing them in an actual theatre. Granted - there weren't VCRS and video rental joints on every corner when nor where I grew up. I started the list. 

I'm not going to count the first memory I have of going to a movie: 1964 - sitting in the metallic aqua colored upholstered 'way back' seat of our white station wagon at the Drive-In. No - the first time I remember going by myself was to a Saturday kids matinee of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory" in 1967. 

So apparently, I've been an avid movie goer since the age of 5. I'm not lying. I was tall for my age, my parents trusted me, and since I didn't have any friends or play sports and it was actually the only thing that I was actively interested in doing - my parents didn't see the problem. But I hated going to Saturday kid matinees - it was always too crowded, too noisy, and just another place for me to get beaten up, bullied, and harassed like I was every other day of the week while at school. No I preferred going to the theatre in the evening - like everyone else. Especially during the summer months when we would stay at our lake side vacation home - miles away from anyone who would know me to bother me. 
Anyway - more on all this later - as that's the reason for starting this in the first place to tell the stories of my life with the added insight of which movies I was watching along the way. I think that this list is fairly accurate. Though I must admit I'm still adding and altering the list as memories pop into my brain. 

On Facebook - I've only been listing movies that I truly feel influenced me in a substantial way as a child. But here I'll have the entire list - hopefully I will get it to the point where rather than just listed by year alphabetically I'll be able to find out the actual date of their release and list them appropriately, So yeah - this is all just a big work in progress. I have no idea what will become of it - but at the very least I've made a start!