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12:06am October 29, 2014
My mother does the best Gollum impressions I’ve ever heard. This takes some explaining. Growing up, I was an enormous Lord of the Rings fan. I started with The Hobbit in school, which I liked so much that when they made me repeat a year of reading class, and normally would’ve had me on a slightly different book than everyone else, i insisted on doing The Hobbit again. It took me a couple of years to find the wonders of LoTR, because the title sounded like something out of a bad Saturday morning cartoon and my expectations were quite low. Thus I was so pleasantly surprised when I did read it that I read it year after year, several times a year, and based part of my fantasy world I was trying to live in (long story, told here if you’re interested) on Lothlorien and Fangorn. After someone told me I looked like an elf, I started insisting I was an elf. But I knew deep down in my heart that I was more like an Ent. Ents are tree herders, guardians of the forest, and they look like walking talking trees. And talk about grumpy sticks, it takes a lot to piss one off but you do not want to get on one’s bad side. Legend has it that Ents did not start out with the power of language. The Elves loved language and loved talking to things, so in the early days they were always “waking things up” so they could talk to them. Which makes them sound like over-zealous speech therapists. Since they were not native to language, their language usage was formed by their outside-of -language thought. Each word became the entire story of the specific thing they described. Each tree, each hill, each blade of grass had its own separate name that was, itself, a long story. If you haven’t noticed, this bears a striking resemblance to my communication style, right down to bring unable to write succinctly because language, all language, is foreign to me, so I am more long- winded than even I can stand at times. ( Not being native to language, my language comprehension sucks, and I can’t read my own long posts.) I also treat the redwoods I was born into with the same reverence an Ent would, and constantly feel my state of exile. Anyway my parents really didn’t see why I was so obsessed with Tolkien until the movies came out. After seeing the first two extended editions, my dad went and saw the third one in the theater. I had bought them a copy of the book, with paper clips carefully arranged to avoid spoilers for the third movie. So my dad went to the theater and was thrilled. He said when Legolas killed the Oliphaunt, everyone cheered like they used to do in movies when he was a kid (he was at that point around 70 I think). They watched all the movies, read the whole book, and loved it. Loved all of it. Our last name is Baggs. Technically it’s supposed to be Beggs, a Scottish name, but it got misspelled on a census and we’ve been Baggses ever since. My parents were thrilled with the resemblance to Baggins. They started calling themselves hobbits. Saying stuff like “we’re not overweight, we’re hobbits and we like our food”. When they retired, they moved to a remote hillside on the edge of a National Forest land and now live in two trailer-housing type buildings in the forest. On the road going up to their property, they posted a big sign that said “Baggs End”. They started calling themselves hermit hobbits. It was great, still is, to see something I loved so much, bridge such a large generation gap. Anyway so my mom could give Andy Serkis a run for his money. For the longest time she’d freak my dad out by going at random into a Gollum voice and saying things like “those hobbitses are tricksssssy, aren’t they, my precccioussssssss?” And I’m not exaggerating her talents. She could voice-act for Gollum any day and get paid good money with the right agent. Not that she should. She’s just that good. I hope she still does Gollum impressions for my dad while he’s going through this long dying process. Our family knows from experience that humor and love are the only way to get through hard times with your sanity intact. Anyway, the above photo was sent to me when my parents first retired, with the filename hermit hobbits. I love that my parents have become hard core Lord of the Rings fans. I just love it. And I love my mom’s Gollum impersonations. TL;DR: When my parents retired they saw the Lord of the Rings movies, read the book, and became huge fans. They have a sign on their hill that says Baggs End (due to a census misspelling of Beggs, Baggs is our surname) and my mom does scary, kick-ass Gollum impersonations.

My mother does the best Gollum impressions I’ve ever heard.

This takes some explaining.

Growing up, I was an enormous Lord of the Rings fan. I started with The Hobbit in school, which I liked so much that when they made me repeat a year of reading class, and normally would’ve had me on a slightly different book than everyone else, i insisted on doing The Hobbit again. It took me a couple of years to find the wonders of LoTR, because the title sounded like something out of a bad Saturday morning cartoon and my expectations were quite low. Thus I was so pleasantly surprised when I did read it that I read it year after year, several times a year, and based part of my fantasy world I was trying to live in (long story, told here if you’re interested) on Lothlorien and Fangorn.

After someone told me I looked like an elf, I started insisting I was an elf. But I knew deep down in my heart that I was more like an Ent. Ents are tree herders, guardians of the forest, and they look like walking talking trees. And talk about grumpy sticks, it takes a lot to piss one off but you do not want to get on one’s bad side.

Legend has it that Ents did not start out with the power of language. The Elves loved language and loved talking to things, so in the early days they were always “waking things up” so they could talk to them. Which makes them sound like over-zealous speech therapists. Since they were not native to language, their language usage was formed by their outside-of -language thought. Each word became the entire story of the specific thing they described.

Each tree, each hill, each blade of grass had its own separate name that was, itself, a long story. If you haven’t noticed, this bears a striking resemblance to my communication style, right down to bring unable to write succinctly because language, all language, is foreign to me, so I am more long- winded than even I can stand at times. ( Not being native to language, my language comprehension sucks, and I can’t read my own long posts.) I also treat the redwoods I was born into with the same reverence an Ent would, and constantly feel my state of exile.

Anyway my parents really didn’t see why I was so obsessed with Tolkien until the movies came out. After seeing the first two extended editions, my dad went and saw the third one in the theater. I had bought them a copy of the book, with paper clips carefully arranged to avoid spoilers for the third movie. So my dad went to the theater and was thrilled. He said when Legolas killed the Oliphaunt, everyone cheered like they used to do in movies when he was a kid (he was at that point around 70 I think). They watched all the movies, read the whole book, and loved it. Loved all of it.

Our last name is Baggs. Technically it’s supposed to be Beggs, a Scottish name, but it got misspelled on a census and we’ve been Baggses ever since. My parents were thrilled with the resemblance to Baggins. They started calling themselves hobbits. Saying stuff like “we’re not overweight, we’re hobbits and we like our food”. When they retired, they moved to a remote hillside on the edge of a National Forest land and now live in two trailer-housing type buildings in the forest. On the road going up to their property, they posted a big sign that said “Baggs End”. They started calling themselves hermit hobbits. It was great, still is, to see something I loved so much, bridge such a large generation gap.

Anyway so my mom could give Andy Serkis a run for his money. For the longest time she’d freak my dad out by going at random into a Gollum voice and saying things like “those hobbitses are tricksssssy, aren’t they, my precccioussssssss?” And I’m not exaggerating her talents. She could voice-act for Gollum any day and get paid good money with the right agent. Not that she should. She’s just that good.

I hope she still does Gollum impressions for my dad while he’s going through this long dying process. Our family knows from experience that humor and love are the only way to get through hard times with your sanity intact.

Anyway, the above photo was sent to me when my parents first retired, with the filename hermit hobbits. I love that my parents have become hard core Lord of the Rings fans. I just love it. And I love my mom’s Gollum impersonations.

TL;DR: When my parents retired they saw the Lord of the Rings movies, read the book, and became huge fans. They have a sign on their hill that says Baggs End (due to a census misspelling of Beggs, Baggs is our surname) and my mom does scary, kick-ass Gollum impersonations.

Notes:
  1. withasmoothroundstone posted this