movies. In fact as a chubby little preschooler, there was nothing else I really wanted to do. Already by that time my parents had unsuccessfully tried to hook me into various team sports, but I wasn't nibbling. In kindergarten I tried soccer, but I wasn't very fast, and one afternoon my parents forgot to pick me up. I waited for them outside at the downtown YMCA for what seemed like hours, scared out of my Keds, and I was sure at the time that I was scarred for life. Later, when I tried the kids' swim team, I nearly drowned, prompting the lifeguard on duty to jump in and actually save someone, another event I wasn't anxious to re experience. Furthermore, my memories of early P.E. are a kaleidoscopic jumble of embarrassing moments, the worst of which involved me splitting open the seat of my pants in front of the whole class. I exposed my red G..I. Joe underwear, and even the teacher laughed. Now , as I look back I realized athletics was making me occasionally very miserable in my early years. Yet it seemed like every kid was athletic, or at least involved in athletics, and so I hopped on the bandwagon at a young age, crossing my fingers everytime I put on a pair of tennis shoes, hoping I'd magically take to sports. What else was there to do?
Then I remember the golden day I stumbled onto a solution, one of the most important days in my life,certainly the most cathartic. One day in late May, 1983, when I was five years old, my mother came to school and pulled me out of class. I think I figured I had a doctor's appointment, but my mother was mum.
Only five, I vaguely remember a long walk in downtown Rochester, Minnesota, which at the time probably seemed bigger than it actually was. I had no clue where we were headed, but finally we turned into what looked like the ticket booth of an old theater. Then I remember sitting with my mother in a plush, dimly lit burgundy and cream theater. Confused, with no one to turn to I supposes that when the curtain went up we'd watch a play or hear a concert.
The lights went down. The curtain rose. To my surprise, I saw a screen and suddenly, I was attacked in the dark on all sides by a burst of trumpets. The Star Wars theme was overpowering, and I nearly fell out of my seat. Two hours later, I learned I'd just seen the premiere showing of Return of the Jedi, the latest in the Star Wars saga. I'm the kid who saw The Empire Strikes Back eight times in the theater and owned all the action figures; needles to say. I was shocked into open-mouthed euphoria at the surprise of another Star Wars movie.
Yet I barely recall watching the movie for the first time, I only remember the actual experience itself, from the moment when John Williams' brass sprayed the theater and transported me onto another wavelength. Ever since then, I've been in a galaxy of my own, far, far away from sports, for soon I started watching movies anytime and anywhere I could, even though the experiences was never nearly the same as it was in that classic theater, the kind of place where all movies should be watched. I developed a fascination with films as I have for nothing else in life, and I can trace most of the reasons why back to that May afternoon.
Sports and athletics don't approach the thrill that most movies provide; nothing does really. In movies real life is postponed, then quickly forgotten, embellished or accentuated. You can cast off from the world for a while and then sail home changed, refreshed and alive. Even if the ride is sometimes rough, the trip is worth retaking.
