I’ve never been a fan of movies with Mary Poppins endings. You know the ones, the stories that end with all the broken people being put back together again while the person who did the fixing disappears silently into the ending credits?

As a child, I had questions.

Questions such as:

Did the children ever see Mary again? What about on Christmas or Easter? Did she send them postcards to tell them about the other children she was helping so it didn’t sound like a bullshit excuse to hightail it the hell out of their lives? (okay maybe I didn’t think that last thing in those exact words as a child, but it was close).

And what about that Pete’s Dragon? Whatever happened to him? Did he find another little nearly-orphaned boy to take care of? What if he didn’t? What the hell happened to Elliot?’

And did Poppins ever get a hard case she couldn’t crack? Did she ever stay years at a house, and in the end, the daughter ended up hanging off a pole showing fat old businessmen her tramp stamp? Did Poppins ever have to sneak off to the pub and drink herself silly? How far does this Practically Perfect nonsense really go? And are there really people or magic beings who can detach themselves from others so much as to leave them forever, even when they were solely responsible for these people’s happiness?

If so, how do I become one of them?