So this weekend we managed to actually rent and at least partially enjoy a couple of movies: Charlie Wilson's War, which was really good, and The Savages, which was okay but I think I missed some layer of. Heady with our success, I hurried back to the video store to attempt another round. Unfortunately, not only did I fail miserably on the one we tried to watch last night, it actually led to a evening of unrest.
See, I rented The Fountain because it looked interesting and it was supposed to be romantic. Apparently, the writers of the film think that a man creating an elaborate fantasy to deal with the death of his wife is romantic. Perhaps I read the box wrong, but suggesting to your wife that a film is supposed to be romantic, and then having the movie deal pretty much with the fact that the guys wife is dying, well, it just doesn't go over as well as one might hope.
Worse than the failed romantic nature of the movie, however, was that the movie led to a moment of exquisite pain for me, a moment that reminded me that my entire system needs to be reformatted and programmed from scratch. My lovely wife looked at me and, referring to the main character of the movie who was a researcher trying to find a cure for his wife's terminal illness, playfully asked if I would do whatever it took to save her if we were in the same situation.
Now, for anyone who is even vaguely aware of how things work between men and women know that this was a total freebie. This isn't a girlfriend test, where we're seeing if the boyfriend knows how to answer certain questions to please his lady (a nasty form of communication that my love has never participated in as far as I know). No, this was a simple serve, and required nothing but a simple volley back.
Unfortunately, my wiring is sufficiently faulty to make even this simple exchange an experience in awkward failure. See, when she asked, my brain did two things simultaneously. First, it processed the word "duh", which, while technically correct, did not seem a proper response to such a weighty question, even when said question is asked in a playful manner. While my brain searched for the proper response, it started opening incorrect files, where it came across this, a random comic that matched the situation closely enough for my mind to momentarily veer off in that direction. Realizing that this was a dead end, I realized that I hadn't responded to the question, causing a semi-panicked response to what must have seemed like hesitation to such a simple and obvious question.
"Sure."
So, now I'm watching a not exactly romantic movie about a guy who is trying desperately to save his wife, and I've just responded to my wife with all the passion one reserves for such weighty questions as "Hey, you feel like some nachos?". Ugh. Not long after, we decide that it's time for bed, and that we would finish the movie later, but all I could think of is this Q & A. What an utter and total failure.
Of all the jobs I have, what could be more important than letting the people I love know how important they are to me? At what point did I lose the ability to convey this message without assistance from card makers and flower shops? For that matter, why is it I haven't bought anyone a card or flowers? For a long time, I haven't been anywhere near the person I want to be, and it's my family that suffers for it.
So I woke up this morning after a lousy night's sleep pondering all of this, and I remembered that I needed reprogramming. Unfortunately for me, I cannot perform the aforementioned formatting, wiping my hard drive and putting back only the things that matter. So I have to find another way, and I'm not sure what that's going to be. As a result, this blog might not be the jovial place you're used to for a while. I'll try to put a link to something that's more fun in an effort to make it up to you. For today, the link above will have to do.
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