I remember watching the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan repeatedly as a child. There is a part in the movie where Tinkerbell is dying and the only way to save her is to show your belief in fairies by clapping really hard. At this part of the movie, they break the fourth wall and ask the viewers to clap if they believe. I used to clap until my hands were sore. Tinkerbell’s light would be blinking out and then due to my clapping it would grow brighter and brighter. If my mom was around, I would bring her over to the t.v. and make her clap too. 
With both of my parents in the movie business, I understood at a young age that once something was recorded onto a tape, it was the same every time you watched it. There was just something about the “what if” that pushed me to clap. What if this movie was different? Could I really risk killing Tinkerbell? She was a bitch but she didn’t deserve to die. As I grew older I became more skeptical and I knew it was silly to clap. No matter what I did, Tinkerbell was going to survive. I knew that. But I never stopped clapping. 
A few months ago I saw “He’s Just Not That Into You” and was disturbed by whatever plastic surgery it was that Jennnifer Aniston had done to her face. It looked like she had a nose job and her face looked swollen from collagen. I saw the movie again last week and the first thing I thought when I saw Jennifer Aniston was: why hasn’t the swelling gone down yet? It had been a few months. Surely she could not still be swollen. And why didn’t she change her nose back to the way it was? Surely she doesn’t like what she has done to her face. And then of course I thought: duh. It’s a movie and it won’t change. I knew that was the reality but I couldn’t stop myself from wishing before all of her scenes that she would look normal again. Maybe if I tried clapping…