My mom was strongly Irish-Catholic and believed in proactive forms of violence.

How she explained this to us as kids, was by using Sound of Music.

The nuns disable the Nazis' cars by removing essential engine parts so that the Von Trapp family can escape.

(including the nun who didn't really like Maria too much)

And they show the parts to the Mother Superior to 'confess' their 'sin'.

And my mom made damned sure we knew that doing something normally wrong, like fucking up a car...

was ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS the right thing when facing evil, and to save lives.

She also explained to us why Rolf ratted them out. When the father told him, 'You'll never be one of them' he meant it as the highest honor of course. He himself refused to be one of them.

But Rolf had tied his concept of MANHOOD to 'them'. The Nazis. And he felt emasculated, that he was 'weak' for not blowing the whistle on them...because he was soft, because he had FEELINGS.

That's why he reacts as though he was slapped.

And while the term 'toxic masculinity' had not yet, to my knowledge, been coined...

that's what she would explain to us. Every damned Easter when that movie aired on television. :)

Important lessons for us all.

Oh, my mom also explained the risks too.

She said those nuns KNEW they could have been killed for what they'd done. That their entire convent could have been ended...for their actions.

And you ALWAYS do the right thing. ALWAYS.

And we knew we were watching a real story, not fiction.

Of course, the movie is a fictional version, highly fictional in many instances...version of the Von Trapps (their story though is incredible).

But...we knew it was real, and these lessons were...very real to us.