Sally: ...And Joe and I used to talk about it, and we'd say we were so lucky we have this wonderful relationship, we can have sex on the kitchen floor and not worry about the kids walking in. We can fly off to Rome on a moment's notice. ... And I started to cry. You know, I just started crying. And I went home, and I said, "The thing is, Joe, we never do fly off to Rome on a moment's notice."
Harry: And the kitchen floor?
Sally: [sadly] Not once. It's this very cold, hard Mexican ceramic tile.
- "When Harry Met Sally"
Mrs. Geek and I got to spend the day with friends D. and J. and at many baby back pork ribs cooked with a rub that I've been developing. During the course of the evening, we watched When Harry Met Sally on DVD. It was the first time I probably sat through the whole movie since the early 1990's. I was curious about whether or not my reaction to the film would be any different now than it was then... the film's commentary about relationships between men and women was very much discussed then I was in my Junior and Senior years in college.
I think a lot of the movies observations still ring very true... though I now side with different characters in the movie. Back then, I was feeling most sympathetic to poor Harry... the guy who can never quite make it work on an emotional level with the women in his life. Now, Mrs. Geek and I sympathize with Marie (Carrie Fisher) and Jess (Bruno Kirby)... especially when Marie says "Tell me I'll never have to be out there again" and Jess does just that.
Another thing I notice is my reaction to Sally's soliloquy above. When I was in my 20's, I used to think "oh yeah... sex on the kitchen floor... spontaneous, passionate, mad." As someone a little older and perhaps wiser, I think "sex on the kitchen floor... hey what's wrong with being a little comfortable on a sofa or a bed?"
The change in sentiment reinforces something I observed some time ago: growing old is in part about the transition from desiring quantity of experience to desiring quality of experience. Why have Budweiser from St. Louis Missouri when you could have real Czechvar from the Czech Republic? Why have dollar well drinks when you could have single malt scotch?
I don't think that being older means being any less passionate or emotionally involved. It just means that a bunch of "been there, done that" experiences have been crossed off the list. The things that are left are the ones that are truly joyous and truly pleasurable.
said drgeek
on 2005-09-04 at 11:04 p.m.
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The Wayback Machine - To Infinity And Beyond
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