Twelve us ended up at the movies together on Saturday night — my husband, my four kids, and six extra kids. I’m using the term “kids” loosely here: they are mostly young adults. My husband loves to gather a whole gang for a movie. He'd been looking forward to the event all week. I’d promised not to make snarky comments during the movie, but everyone knew that I wouldn’t keep that promise.
“The whole theater would be quiet,” Boy in Black said afterwards, “And then I’d hear you laughing aloud. At parts that weren’t supposed to be funny.”
Well, yeah. When a character comes through with a cheesy line that is totally expected, the melodrama makes me laugh. I can’t help it.
My daughter summed up the movie in a single line: “The boy who can’t use his weapon until he’s a man.” I kept thinking that the actor who played Thor should have been at least a little bit attractive: the love plot made no sense at, especially since the character was supposed to be an arrogant, stubborn jerk for the whole first half of the movie. I can’t even imagine why a smart beautiful astrophysicist would fall for someone like him.
Back home, the young men argued with me about my characterization of Thor. “No, really, most women find him attractive,” they kept saying. I rolled my eyes.
“Believe it or no, real life women prefer smart sensitive guys like you,” I told them. When asked who my celebrity crushes are, I always say Dana Carvey and Jim Parsons. You can’t beat a guy who makes you laugh.
In the midst of the argument, Boy in Black grabbed our box of candles and began lighting them. “It’s after midnight,” he said. “And it’s Mother’s Day.”
Usually, I’m the one who begins a candle ceremony; my kids know how much I like to just sit in a dimly lit room and listen to everyone talk. “It’s the tangents and the jokes and the bonding and all that,” Boy in Black explained to Blue-eyed Ultimate Player, who hadn’t been to our house for a candle ceremony before. “It doesn’t really matter what you say.”
He was right, of course. It was a nice way to end the night, all of us clustered in the living room, sitting practically on each other’s laps, and laughing at the jokes and stories that got told as each person in the circle took a turn.
10 comments:
Your family. Love them. Love your candles.
And I do that too in movies, only I TALK at the screen. Drives my kids bananas. They are good at glaring as a result.
Julie: Ha! We should watch movies together sometime. I think the world could benefit from our commentary.
I kept thinking that the actor who played Thor should have been at least a little bit attractive.
You haven't been spending much time around gay men, have you? All I've been hearing for months is how hot he is and how shirtless he probably is. Frankly, I thought the movie was made primarily for a gay male audience.
“Believe it or no, real life women prefer smart sensitive guys like you,” I told them.
Not sensitive but kind. Smart and kind. Also it matters less to me what a man looks like, you know, posing for a picture, than how he moves. You should see my husband on skis. *swoon* : )
Nels's comment cracked me up!
Oh, and could you please tell us more about the candles ceremony? I don't recall reading about it before although you've probably mentioned it & I might not have been paying enough attention.
Nels: Clearly, I need to spend more time with gay men.
Jennifer: You're so right.
Lilian: We do the candle ceremony usually for birthdays. We all sit in the living room, light a bunch of candles, and turn off the lights. It used to be that each person held a candle, but more often now, we just put a bunch on a table or stool. We go around the circle, and the rule is that you're supposed to say something nice about the person whose birthday it is. We end up telling lots of anecdotes and jokes along the way.
We began the tradition when the kids were very little, and it used to take about ten minutes. Now it takes hours ....
and they did that for mother's day -- how wonderful!
Anytime a guy has his shirt off that much in a movie, it's because of the gay men on the production team. Same with that movie his little brother was in last summer. Was there any reason for that movie to have taken place on a beach? Just go back to Young Guns, the movie at the time with the hotest young male actors around, and almost every man who handled the preliminary stages of casting was gay (I dated one at the time).
Nels: Ah, it's all making sense to me now ....
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