March 1997: I was a Sophomore in high school and the Jim Carrey classic Liar Liar was about to hit movie theaters.
My best friend, Phillip K. Ballz,1Almost but not quite his real name. Also, it’s a Phillip K. ----- pun. For the various reasons “Ballz” was choice #2, yet will be used in place of choice #1, “Phillip K. Dickhead.” Sorry to disappoint. and I were so excited to go see it, given that its humor matched our early high school maturity level pretty well. For reference, when reminiscing over this particular story, Phillip K. had to correct me when I asserted that the movie we went to see was Beavis and Butthead Do America. Consumers of real high-class content, we were.
There was one fly in the ointment with our plans to partake in SW Kansas High Society, though: transportation. The nearest theater was in Liberal, a good 45 minutes away, which was too far to drive without a proper license, and if I recall correctly, this lined up almost exactly with me failing my first attempt at acquiring one.3This is a short story for another time. It was an act of great injustice, I say! P.K. was a year younger than me, and maybe had his learner’s permit, but regardless, we sure weren’t able to make the trek of our own accord.
However, destiny intervened on our behalf that early spring weekend: premiering in theaters nationwide on the same day as Liar Liar was the Jennifer Lopez classic Selena.
For the young folk, this was the biopic based on the life of the original Selena. Not that cheap knock-off Selena Gomez–just “Selena.” Like Cher, Bono, or Oprah, she was so huge in el Mundo Hispanico4I.e. The Hispanic World that she didn’t need a last name. In fact, I don’t even know what it is without googling it.
Anyways, her promising life and musical career were cut way short when she was shot by the president of her fan club. It was a very tragic story–one that was just begging to be made into a movie.
Now, by a stroke of pure luck, my Caucasian-as-can-be father, Bob J., just so happened to be married to a Hispanic woman, “Daisy.”6Kind of her real name, but not exactly. In other words, I had7And still have. the good fortune of being blessed with a Mexican step-mother. Who was also–and this is a critical plot point–a HUGE Selena fanático.
So you know that sure as shit they were going to see Selena the very day it came out. And they were kind enough to bring along Señor Ballz and me so we could see the movie of our choice. Which definitely wasn’t going to be Selena. But you already knew that.
According to my research on IMDB.com, the runtime for Liar Liar is 1h 26min, while Selena, being of a bit more substance, runs 2h 7min. This jives pretty well with my recollection of the events that were to follow.
Since the movies started about the same time, that meant that our juvenile laugh-fest ended ~41 minutes before our ride home was available. We messed around for a bit, thinking we would only be waiting 20 minutes or so for my parents’ movie to get out, but eventually grew impatient and set up camp right outside the theater that was showing Selena.
We had been waiting there for a good 15 minutes before the dam finally broke. We watched in solemn amusement as one sobbing Latina after another came pouring out, each trying in vain to turn back the waterworks streaming down their faces. It had clearly been an emotional powerhouse of a movie.
And then, in the middle of all that, sticking out like a sore thumb, out waltzes Bob J., with an oblivious grin on his face, like the only thing going through his head was “doot-dee-doot-dee-doo!”
By our estimate, he was the only white person, only one of two males, and had the only two dry eyes out of the entire crowd.
We lost our shit over that image, and it took us a good 5 minutes to recover from laughter.
Of course, Daisy didn’t appreciate the humor quite as much, as she thought we were laughing at all the brown broken hearts (we weren’t).
Now, I’m pretty sure that this memory has been ingrained deeply in my hippocampus primarily because of the humorous cultural, ethnic, and emotional juxtaposition my dad exemplified in that moment.
But the great part of The Point of the Story project is that recollection is often followed by reflection, sometimes with surprising results.8As was the case in A Most Excellent Life Lesson — the twist at the end of that one caught me by surprise as well![/ref] Writing this tale got me to thinking about what we had really witnessed that fateful evening in 1997.
We didn’t see a man comically out of his element.
No, what we saw was a man who didn’t give a flying ----- how ridiculous he might appear in the course of loving his wife. He was literally a walking example of true love in the analog age.9In contrast to what it looks like in the digital age.
Well, ok, so he was comically out of his element. But in the sweetest, most endearing way. I still get to laugh at this memory, right? Right?
Papa Bob–may you rest in peace–thanks for showing me that love can take on many forms; namely, that of a tearless, grinning white man. Which is good because I think I should be able to pull that one off pretty well…
“Doot-dee-doot-dee-doo!”
Content created on: well…it sure wasn’t “23 October” like I claim below…stupid technology.
Content created on: 23 October 2019 (Wednesday)
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