the pieces of my life

My memories of childhood are hazy, which is why that I remember this one fairly clearly is rather odd: I’m nine years old. There’s a movie out that my father is crazy to see. It’s been out for a bit, and apparently everyone is talking about so we make arrangements to go to the movies with our neighbors, who have a son my age and a daughter Tweedle Twirp’s age.

Because Tweeds has just turned six, she is deemed too young for the movie, and she is offered the opportunity to see, with some random grown-up and the other little sister, in another theater of the multiplex the movie Pete’s Dragon. They decide upon that without hesitation. The brother and I are also given a choice: Pete’s Dragon or this definitely grown-up movie called Star Wars.

The brother and I consult for a few moments, before deciding upon the obvious: Star Wars.

The movie was entrancing. I was hooked.

We didn’t wait as long to see Empire Strikes Back when it was released. Return of the Jedi I saw on the opening weekend, with friends. For these movies, I saw them early enough that the movies were fresh, exciting. No Internet could spoil the endings. The movie reviews were subtle enough not to give anything away. I remember my shock and excitement at the “big reveal” in Empire. It was brillant! Genius! Oh. My. God! (Or, rather, as I would have said back then, “It was totally bitchin’!”)

Flash forward a dozen years or so, and yes, I was the geek outside at the midnight showing of Phantom Menace. To my credit, I wasn’t the one who left the office at 11 a.m., paying good money for the movie Meet Jack Black, just to see the trailer for Phantom Menace and then leaving without seeing the movie. This should not be a surprise to anyone. I worked at Amazon.com in 1999 at a time when it was populated with hipsters and geeks (as opposed to now when it’s filled with blue shirts and khaki pants). One of my geek friends waited in line for opening day tickets, and kindly purchased one for me.

It was disappointing. I was upset. That didn’t stop me from seeing the movie again with my folks, but I was left saddened.

Attack of the Clone Wars came out a month after Adam and I were married. Despite both of us not liking Phantom, we dutifully filed in at the Cinerama for it. Eh.

Here’s a confession. Revenge of the Sith came out in 2005. Something else was happening in 2005. What was it? What was it? Hmmmm. Well, whatever it was, we never got around to seeing the final Star Wars movie. Adam actually DVR’d it a few months ago, and it sits mockingly on our TV, laughing at me every time I go to watch Dance Moms (yes, Dance Moms! See how the mighty have fallen. Get over yourself, people!).

But here we are. Dance Moms not withstanding, Adam and I responsible grown-ups with an obligation to do what’s right for our children. And the big questions these days, the weight upon every parent Gen Xer today, the albatross we must carry is: In what order do you allow your children to view “Star Wars”? Do you see them chronological order, starting with Phantom Menace and ending with Return of the Jedi? Or do you watch them in release order, starting with New Hope and ending with Revenge of the Sith?

This became of grave importance recently when in a discussion of “Star Wars,” Pie asked, “So, Darth Vader is Luke’s father?”

I responded: “You’re not supposed to know that.”

She continued: “And Queen Amidalah is Princess Leia’s mother, so Luke and Leia are brother and sister, right?”

“You’re NOT supposed to know that!” I say louder, feeling agitated.

“Mom!” said my oh-so-wise second grader. “I’ve known that since kindergarten!”

Oh my child. I am your mother. I am here to rescue you.

This past weekend, I declared that we would all be watching the “Star Wars” films. All of them. Doodles had seen Episode IV: The New Hope (for which I still get in trouble for referring to it as the first “Star Wars” film) a while ago, but I think it had been a couple of years.

Adam had previously done extensive research on the “what order to watch the films” dilemma, in anticipation for this day comes. We were in agreement that the films should be viewed in the Machete Order (IV, V, II, III, VI, and then much, much later I), although Adam thinks that we should view Episode I before Episode II, and I think we stick with the order and watch Episode I at the end.

Saturday was a rainy, stormy night. Adam brought our copy of Episode IV up from the basement. The kids curled up on the couch, and I used it as my opportunity to sew badges on Pie’s Brownie vest as I cheered on the Rebel forces.

The movie began. “You are going to love this!” I promised Pie. “Be brave like Princess Leia! Tomorrow night, we’ll watch Empire Strikes Back, and next weekend we’ll move on to the next movie!”

She buried her head in the couch for a few scenes. She watched most of it. She seemed to like it.

But then she didn’t want to go to sleep by herself. And finally, once she was down, she was up a couple of hours later. I was still awake, getting ready for bed, and she refused to leave my side, merely following me around like a little shadow.

Before I could even get her into bed, the bigger one was up. “Back into bed, Monkey,” Adam said quietly, gently leading him back to his bedroom.

“Uh uh!!” came the growl out of the half-asleep boy as he planted himself in our doorway, refusing to be carried back to his room.

I gave up. There were four in the bed and the little one said, “Star Wars is scary!”

Sunday morning, Adam bleary-eyed said to me, “I guess we’re not watching Empire Strikes Back tonight, huh?”

No, my padawan, I don’t think we shall. We’ll try again in a few more years. With luck, the Force in our children will be stronger then. May the Force be with you.

Pie and I are watching My Fair Lady. We’re at the part of the movie where Professor Higgins sings the song “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”

Pie asked me: Did you hear that?

Me: Yes.

Pie: He wants to know why women can’t be more like men.

Me: I heard that. What do you think of that.

Pie: [With a roll of the eyebrows] Well, of course not. Women have two br*easts. Men don’t have br*easts. Men have p*enises. Women don’t have p*enises. Most of us have long hair and not much of them have long hair.

Can’t argue with logic like that!

I realize that I’ve been lame of late. Adam’s office party was simply disappointing. I mean, the party was great. But my general behavior was so good that it it was terrible. Then a few nights later, we went to a swanky 40th birthday party for an old friend of Adam’s. The whiskey sour was amazing. The wine was free-flowing. The potential was there for me to make a total ass of myself… and yet, I behaved like a grown-up. I know! So disappointing!

To make up for this dismaying lack of lack of decorum on my part (did you follow that?), this past weekend I hosted a special movie night for my movie night gang. I have five friends who come over once a month (it was six, but Sunrise decided that trivial things like children, community obligations, and a healthy spousal relationship took priority over our movie night; I know, we’re better off without her kind!) to watch a movie, eat popcorn with too much butter, devour buckets of Trader Joe’s chocolates, and consume gallons of red wine. It started after the New York trip when Sunrise declared she had never seen Heathers. As soon as we got back, we scheduled a movie screening. Movie night took on a life of its own and every month the next movie has just been something that made sense. Something we all agreed upon for whatever reason. We’ve watched Class (Andrew McCarthy!), Broadcast News, The Big Chill, St. Elmo’s Fire (more Andrew McCarthy!), the original Women (Jungle Red nails!).

I don’t know how it happened, but at our last movie night, the conversation somehow turned to Cougartown. Yes. The TV show. Here’s a secret about me. I am obsessed with this show. Obsessed. I am devastated that it hasn’t been on the air in just about forever (but it is coming back!). Hey, even Abed on Community can’t get enough of Cougartown. Turns out, two others of our sixsome also like Cougartown. So we decided on a Cougartown marathon for our next movie night. But somehow, things went wonky. I’m not sure if it was the chocolate or the butter or–could it be?–the red wine, but someone came up with the idea of making it a family event. Of subjecting our husbands to Cougartown as well.

And so it was written. And so it was done.

Sunday was our Cougartown marathon. Children were banished to the basement with juice boxes and Daddy Day Camp on DVD. To make the event a little more tolerable to the husbands, we combined our TV marathon with a bourbon tasting. Nothing makes Adam happier than bourbon. Except for perhaps lots of bourbon.

Of course, as anyone who watches the show knows, Jules has a love affair with her wine and her wine glass (is this the appeal of the show? A 40-something woman who drinks too much and gets snarky with her best friend? Naaahh. No resemblance here). Her first glass, Big Joe, comes to a sad end, and it replaced with Big Carl. Of course, we couldn’t have our Cougartown night without our own Big Joe’s, which are apparently called Big Bens:

We had pizza and wine and bourbon and popcorn and chocolate and birthday cake and non-birthday cake and screaming children and scheming children and not enough chairs and more wine and more bourbon and a happy time was had by all. Nothing too wild happened. Well, nothing that I’d ever share. Because what happens at Movie Night, stays at Movie Night. But I didn’t want you folks thinking I’d lost my edge. I’ve still got it. And it’s sharp!

No, seriously. Tonight a bunch of girlfriends got together and we watched The Big Chill. Have you watched this film lately?

I can’t remember the first time I saw this film, but it must have been in college. The film came out in 1983, when I was 15, and I definitely didn’t see it in the theaters, at least not first run. What I remember about the film, is that it it was about a bunch of old people, and while I thought it was an interesting film, I definitely couldn’t relate to it because everyone was so, well, old and staid, and that was not going to happen to me.

And, now, watching the film, the characters are all a good six or seven years younger than I am now. How did that happen? They watched those crazy black-and-white monster films on the Late Late Show. What happened to the Late Late Show? No one shows those movies anymore. And what did happen to quaaludes? I remember hearing about them constantly in the 1980s; they were all the rage. Remember “Puppy Uppers” and “Doggie Downers”?

And those shoes! I got my first pair of Nikes in 8th grade, when I joined the track team. They were $40, but my father said that was okay, because if you were running, then it was important to have shoes that were good for feet, so I didn’t need to worry about how expensive they were. They were brown. With an orange swoosh.

1983 seems both so remote and just a few days ago. Looking at the VHS tapes, the bulky video camera, that padded shoulders, the short shorts, the big curly hair brings me right back to my room in our house on Miami Beach. At the end, Mary Kay Place (who is practically unrecognizable from her latests role as Roman Grant’s wife in Big Love) passes around a pen and address book and promises to write back to letters. Girl, just text each other your 411 and drop an e-mail once in a while. Or just friend each other on Facebook!

Not that long ago, I was talking to someone about the cliche of the character discovering pertinent information on an answering machine when someone doesn’t answer the phone. This is completely obsolete today. The new cliche is the dead cell phone battery. So many vital parts of movie making are falling by the wayside. The Big Chill couldn’t happen today. “Well, he checked in a couple of days ago on Foursquare at the hardware store.” “Yeah, and just last night he sent a tweet from that party.” “Dude, I totally saw about your marriage falling apart on TMZ.”

Odd to think that someday my kids will watch movies like High Fidelity and Oceans 11 and Mean Girls and say the exact same thing… except they won’t. Those films will be ancient to them, like Easy Rider was to me. The films they’ll be saying these things about haven’t even been shot yet. The boy’s Big Chill won’t even be made for another seven years.

Next time, we’ll be watching the Gen X version of the Boomer’s The Big Chill, which is, of course, St. Elmo’s Fire.

One thing I’ll say about The Big Chill. I was humming “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” for a week the first time I saw it; I’m pretty sure I’ll be humming it for the next week now. Some things never change.

Continuing the trend in which I expose my children to things which are not completely age appropriate for them (the “F You” song, which Pie has deemed too offensive for her to sing even alone in the house with me; The Princess Bride, which scared Pie; The Wizard of Oz–a children’s play version–which scared Pie), I allowed my children to watch the TV cut of School of Rock… which scared Pie.

Yes, that’s right. My girl jumped at School of Rock. When kids were disobeying. “Scary!” When it looked like Jack Black was going to get into trouble? “Scary!” When he got caught? “Scary!” She didn’t want to leave the room (with me), but she didn’t want to watch it either. Up till the end. When the kids rocked out. At which point, she “loved it!”

The boy was a little bored by it at first, but by the end, he was dancing around the family room, shirtless, in his pajama bottoms.

For tomorrow’s movie night, I’m thinking Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It’s about a school, so it’s fine, right? Right?

I’m watching Singing in the Rain with my kids. We checked it out of the library, “we” being me and Pie, as Doodles swore he had no interest and all he wanted to do was listen to the Harry Potter book on CD he checked out. But about ten minutes in, Doodles wandered into the room and became hooked.

“You know,” I told Pie. “Gene Kelly is a very famous dancer.”

“Really?” she asked. “Was he in Mamma Mia?”

Of course, it didn’t start out well. The MGM Lion? Well, apparently it’s terrifying. It took a lot of convincing to get Pie turned around to watch the film. You know what else is terrifying? When Lena gets a Pie in the face. Yikes! Head buried! And if you’re outside in the rain alone? Sc-ar-y!

But nothing, no nothing, is as terrifying to anyone as the romantic scenes are to Doodles. He literally cowers under the covers (he’s watching in his underwear, beneath our couch blanket) anytime anyone embraces and makes whimpering noises if he accidentally sees kissing.

And did you know the movie is confusing. “Why did his face go all squishy? Who talks yucky? Why is that a yucky voice? Why is he going through that wall? Why is she wearing that?” And on. And on. And on.

Till she passed out. Leaving only Doodles glued to the screen. As long as no one is smooching, that is.