Well Hello

I’m 4.  Brow furrowed, heart aching, I am somehow leaving Blockbuster without “The Sound of Music.”  Whoever this "Dolly" is, I do not want to say, "Hello!" to her.  My brain has no room.  I need to see my Maria spinning free on the hills!  They are alive for heaven’s sake!  She wants to skip across rocks and run through fields.  So do I!

"You’ll like it Erin!  Stop pouting!"

The VHS clunks and whizzes, and I whiz with it - into a world completely choreographed by a whipperwhool of a woman with the boldest voice I’ve ever heard and the biggest energy I’ve ever seen.  Her charisma eats up the screen, and while she could never, ever replace my nun who longed for adventure, she makes her own space in my world.

I’m 14.  Boys are really cute - especially this one boy with deep blue eyes and a soul and brain to match.  Plus he has a six pack.  

We have cable now, so I’m flipping through channels.

-And if you act right now-

FLIP

-f only we’d gotten there sooner sh-

FLIP

-ming up next, see how-

FLIP

- OUT THEEEEEERE! -

FLIP pause FLIP BACK

And Dolly and her gang are at it again.  Except it’s the young people who draw me in this time.  All Barnaby and Cornelius want is to kiss a girl.  All I want is to kiss that boy.  I get them.  They get me.  We all eventually get our kiss.  Life really is like the movies!

I’m 17.  Our director is sick so we’re watching a musical in class.  Babs wins the vote over those gangsters who for some reason fight by snapping their fingers at each other.  I smile.  It’s like seeing old friends. I sit and think of other things.  That is, until the parade passes by.

Alright Dolly, you’ve got my attention.  

Suddenly I realize, Dolly got lucky.  She married rich.  Her husband died.  Now she can do WHATEVER she wants.  What a life she’s lived…

Fuck the boy!  I mean - you know what I mean.  Why does every girl who goes looking for adventure end up married?  Really - fuck the boy.

I have to get out of here before the parade passes by, because out there, there’s a world outside of Nebraska, and…

I’m 20.  My college home is Swarthmore, PA, but for now, I’m back in Nebraska.  I’m triple-counting to make sure I have the same 12 bobbing heads that I had when we first sat down.  The chair kicker is strategically seated next to me, I’ve convinced the man behind the counter that it's worth everyone’s while for him to refill two pops that have already spilled - free of charge - and the lights are dimming.  

"OUT THERE!"  Plays on the screen.  In a theater populated by college students and summer campers, I realize I’m the only one who recognizes this song as we spin through solar systems, and streak past planets - Star Trek style - until finally Earth comes in to view.  We meet a cube-ish robot who collects things, human things, things he’s piecing together in a world where he is totally alone (save for one bug).  This little robot reminds me of what it means to wonder.  And he does it at a time when wonder feels very far away.

I’m 27.  Gin and olive juice fill my nostrils as a chorus of voices announce they’ve, “gotta get in step while there’s still time left.”  It’s a sentimental last hurrah for a man who is about to leave the city by the bay.  I talk to him later, and he tells me through tears that he is moving to Florida.  To be close to family, yes, but also to be there for a godchild with a gay son.  The man I’m speaking to wants to make sure that neither of them are left behind by the parade, because many, many years ago he feels like he and his father were.

I now have a heart and a brain full of many examples of courageous, intelligent, independent women.  Many of whom don’t get married at the end of the movie.

The boy is dead, and with him died that little girl who thought that all stories have a happy ending.  It’s a perspective that needed to die.  Still, I wish something else would have killed it.  There have been plenty of moments that would have done the same job far less viciously.

The parade has not passed me by, and I am certainly OUT THERE, both figuratively and literally.

I still love that kid who bangs his feet against the chair in front of him, and I still feel the unrelenting drive to advocate for every kid who “spills a soda.” They all deserve a second chance.  Many of them didn’t get to believe in happy endings as long as I did.  Many of them still do. Regardless, they are all beautiful.

What is all this for?  Who knows.  I got to say, “Hello!” to Dolly for the first time in a while on Monday night.  I guess it just got me thinking.