Thursday, August 30, 2012

How carrying a watermelon can lead to sex and why the Terminator taught me everything I needed to know about love.


Alright, I’m sure I’m breaking old news to you, but yesterday was the 25th Anniversary of “Dirty Dancing.” I know, right? We had the time of our lives, blinked, and now we’re all super-old making Baby references that the interns at work don’t understand. It’s very disorienting.

So then I heard something yesterday about a guy who spent a year blogging about how he watched the movie “Julia and Julia” every single day for 365 days. I was all like “that guy’s crazy!” until I realized that I participated in a very similar secret dare I didn’t know I was having with myself when I watched the following movies a billion times for many consecutive years:
  1. "Dirty Dancing"
  2. "Sleepless in Seattle"
  3. "The Karate Kid"
  4. "My Best Friend’s Wedding"
  5. "When Harry Met Sally"
Also, this weekend I had a whole debate with one of CB’s friends about which song was playing on the beach when Daniel first met Ali during the “Karate Kid.”  I’m pretty sure that everyone else around us was intensely jealous of the level of awesomeness we had reached.


It was "Bop Bop on the Beach." Duh.

Anyway, I got off course there for a second. So when I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to watch “Dirty Dancing.” First of all, I was maybe 9(ish), which I think is a more than appropriate age to watch sweaty teenagers grinding on the dance floor to oldies and learning about the dangers of pre-marital sex by watching the after-effects of a back alley abortion. I see no problem with this. Also, I’m not ashamed to say that it took until I was well into my college years before I realized that that’s what was even happening. I was too focused on when Patrick Swayze would take his shirt off and wondering if all first times were choreographed dance moves to a Soloman Burke record.

Answer: sadly, no.

But since I wasn’t allowed to watch it, I naturally just waited for one of my friends, whose parents didn’t pay very close attention to details, to get it on VHS and then we watched it in her basement one day. But I only got to see maybe a scene or two before my mom came to pick me up and I totally missed out on all the good stuff. Kind of like the time when my dad let us watch “The Terminator” but made my sister and me leave the room during the “love” scene. Trust me, I’m pretty sure I would’ve been less traumatized by that than by Arnold Schwarzenegger blowing away an entire bar full of people and stalking a woman who was carrying the baby of the future leader of the human resistance.

Also, and sorry to break it to you dad, Amanda and I totally went back downstairs and fast forwarded to that scene on the tape after you went to bed. Which lead to me going through my adolescence thinking that basically all you did during sexy time was roll around grabbing covers while looking kind of like you were really exhausted and frustrated with each other the whole time. I was honestly a bit in shock when it came time to live out my own Soloman Burke moment and realized all that was involved. Also, that time hasn’t happened yet because I’m a lady and I don’t roll like that. Obviously.


This is one way to learn about the birds and the bees. Who needs a chastity belt when you have a cyborg assassin?


Basically what I’m saying is this: I could totally blog every single day for the rest of my life about every wonderfully awful 80s movie I’ve seen and memorized. But then the blog would shut down because people would stop reading. And then we’d all be sad because we’d have to search for something else to read for 90 seconds every few days that made us feel better about ourselves for not being me. And that just seems like a lot of work.

What I’m wondering, though, is if I’m totally alone on this. I mean, am I the only one who walks into a work meeting, has to sit in the corner of the room because it’s too full, and then thinks to myself “But nobody puts Becky in the corner!”?

No, right?

Happy Hump Day!

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