This Casting Director Deserves an Oscar

I actively hate fishing.  And the outdoors.  And nature in general, really.  So I honestly did not have high hopes for this film.  Luckily, my opinion changed pretty quickly.  During the first scene, to be precise.  Murmurs of “Is that a young Joseph Gordon-Levitt?” floated throughout the classroom.  Indeed it was.  Things were looking up for this movie already.  And then Brad Pitt came onscreen.  I was sold.

While the cast was spot-on, the true charm of this movie came from the characters themselves.  The film follows two very different brothers who make their way through life together, forever bounded by the river of their youth.  Even though they end up taking very divergent paths, their love for each other is always abundantly apparent.  Someone remarked in class that the film was a little too anticlimactic for their tastes.  But in my opinion, it didn’t really need a climax.  The point of the movie was not to keep you at the edge of your seat.  The point was to tell a story, beautifully and honestly, about two men and the seemingly average lives they lead.  But even an average life can become extraordinary if you look closely enough.  Something that I thought was a very nice touch was the Robert Redford voiceover where he played the elder Norman reflecting back on his life and the people who made it worth living.  The viewer gets to experience the events both in the moment and in retrospect, which lends a unique perspective to the narrative.

The sibling dynamic between the two brothers was one of the most fascinating parts of this movie.  On one hand, you have Paul, the wide-eyed, impetuous younger brother with a penchant for booze and gambling.  And then you have Norman, the serious, level-headed professor with aspirations bigger than his sleepy Montana hometown.  Norman is the type of person who can perfect a craft with a great deal of concentrated effort and practice.  Paul is the type to have an inherent gift.  I think even Norman realized that his brother was a better fisherman than he, though I’m not sure he would ever admit it.  Paul was one with the river.  He was attuned to its behavior in a way that Norman never really could be.  Norman relied on intellect; Paul followed his heart.  Unfortunately, following his heart and being ruled by emotion is what ends up getting Paul into trouble, and ultimately leads to his untimely demise.

To be honest, fly-fishing just seems like a recipe for disaster for the coordination-challenged, such as myself.  But I love how graceful they made it appear in the film.  And furthermore, I love how they managed to reveal the characters’ emotions and personalities by showing how each member of the family would act while fishing.  You knew exactly how that person’s life was going by the amount and type of fish he caught.

Perhaps it is because fall break is approaching and I’m feeling sentimental about going back to see my family, but something about this movie really hit home for me.  Paul and Norman reminded me of me and my own brother.  When Norman went away to college leaving Paul at home, I was reminded of the slight feeling of abandonment that I myself experienced when my brother left home.  Seeing the strong importance that the Macleans placed on family made me feel guilty that I had been too busy to call my mother for the past two and a half weeks.  Really, it just made me miss the old days when we were all together still.  By the end of the movie, I dare say I got a little misty-eyed.  But I swear to god it was just allergies.

A Love Life Almost as Pathetic as My Bowling Skills

I was admittedly a little apprehensive about this second meeting with my conversation partner.  It all started off well and good.  Earlier in the week, she had invited me out to go bowling.  I love bowling.  I don’t mean to brag, but I was in a bowling league in my youth.  (There’s really not a lot to do in Indiana.)  So needless to say, I was pretty stoked.  However, early that day, Alejandra texts me and says that none of her friends wanted to go, so it was just going to be her and her 12-year-old brother.

            Oh.

            Here’s the thing.  Children aren’t exactly my cup of tea.  I don’t particularly like them and I don’t think they are necessarily big fans of me either.  I was the baby of the family, and I never had any young relatives, so I never had to do babysitting duty.  Honestly that was for the best, for everyone’s sake.

            So here I faced a dilemma.  I told her before that I would go, and I didn’t want to flake out on her to now.  But I had also only met her one time before, and already she’s introducing me to the fam?!  (This is moving too fast.)  In the end, I decided to suck it up and go.  I mean, how bad could it be?

            She drove by campus to pick me up.  I got in the car and introduced myself to the 12-year-old sitting in the back seat.  He apparently had his elevator pitch all ready to go because he started spouting off his life story.  He is in seventh grade and loves math, but hates geography (amen, kid, don’t we all).  He wants to be a scientist when he grows up.  But his true passion is video games.  He regaled me with tales of his adventures in Call of Duty and Left 4 Dead for the entire car ride to the bowling alley.  And then again during the entire bowling session.  You could tell that his sister was a bit annoyed with him, but I didn’t mind.  I love video games!  We bonded over favorite characters and weapons of choice (fists or chainsaw, obviously).  He was talking so fervently about the subject, even I got a little lost at times.  He was pretty much a typical 12-year-old boy: too much energy with too short of an attention span.

            When we arrived at the alley, we got our shoes and assigned lane and we all went to go pick out balls.  I was testing the finger holes in a twelve-pounder, and one of the male employees comes up to me and says, “Are you sure you don’t want something lighter?”  Oh boy, if looks could kill.  “No, thank you, this is perfect,” I responded, and sashayed away.  I’m no militant feminist, but come on.  I bet Susan B. Anthony was rolling in her grave.

If we learned one thing from our time together, it’s that we all suck at bowling.  I felt kind of bad that Jesus kept getting gutter balls, so eventually we raised the bumpers.  He did a bit better, but there was still room for improvement.  But that’s when something special happened.  Before he was about to roll the ball, his sister walked up behind him and tried to demonstrate the proper technique.  I thought it was probably one of the most adorable things I had ever seen.  It just goes to show you that familial love spans all cultural lines.  But in spite of the assistance, things weren’t looking so great score-wise.  In his defense, his sister’s and my scores weren’t much better.  I debated for a while whether or not I should let him win.  I had a serious moral dilemma about it.  In the end, I did what I thought was right.  (Spoiler alert: I didn’t let him win.  Not even sorry.)

But easily the funniest part of the get-together happened on the car ride back to campus.  I don’t even really remember how this came up, but somehow we got on the topic of significant others. 

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“HAHAHAHAHA no.”

“Did you leave one back home?”

“No.”

“Are you talking to anybody?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

It was mildly uncomfortable to say the least.  And for some reason I felt the need to expound upon the situation.  I don’t even fully remember what I was rambling about but I’m pretty sure the words “extremely single” were used, much to Alejandra’s horror.  Maybe full disclosure about the sad state of my love life may have been a bit TMI for this point in our friendship.  Oh well.  She asked.

Eight Mosquito Bites Later...

You know it’s going to be a bad time when you are convinced that a ride at Disney World will give you any sort of transferable skills that you can use in a real-world situation.

But alas, there I was, sitting in a boat in the middle of a river, armed with only an oar and the seemingly valuable knowledge I had gained from the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoe Adventure attraction.  Sadly, it turns out that real life is vastly different from theme parks.

Kristen and I got off to a bit of a rocky start, one might say, as we immediately started on a collision course with the embankment the moment we stepped foot into the canoe.  I would like to say that we narrowly avoided the impact through a mix of steering prowess and teamwork, but that would be a blatant lie.  But we eventually got the hang of it, for the most part.

For the first mile or so, I have to say, I was a little bit disenchanted with the experience.  The surroundings kind of reminded me of Indiana, and I don’t mean that in a good way.  It was kind of just a bunch of yellowish grass and…not much else.  Perhaps I had romanticized the idea of a canoe trip too much.  Another thing that didn’t help was the fact that we had somehow managed to position ourselves so far behind the main pack that we could no longer see anyone in front of us, but yet there were still a few stragglers that were far behind.  It was basically just me, Kristen, and the Trinity.  We managed to take solace in the fact that at least we weren’t last.

Things started to look up when the people behind us started catching up and we finally had some company.  One of the student supervisors decided that it would be funny to ram our canoe with his kayak.  My life flashed before my eyes.  Once he regained our trust, he started regaling us with tales of his fascinating life, and eventually the conversation somehow ended up with a rousing game of “make it or break it.”  His contribution was “pancake hands”: if you met someone who was perfect in every way except for the fact that they have syrupy pancakes for hands, would it be a deal breaker?  I felt like more information needed to be given in order for me to make an accurate assessment.  Can he still perform everyday functions with these pancake hands or is this some sort of debilitating ailment?  Yes, he manages to live a normal life.  Do the hands grow back if you eat them off?  Of course.  I thought this wasn’t too bad of a deal.  My canoe mate was horrified.  Hey, at least you would always have a tasty snack around.  I learned some other interesting things about Kristen during this exercise.  Apparently she would not marry someone who exclusively ate dirt, even if he was perfect in every other way.  How shallow.

Eventually we caught up to the main group, and that’s when the fun really started.  I was reminded of home here at good ol’ TCU when I saw a stray Chick-fil-A cup floating merrily along the river.  Chick-fil-A always finds a way, doesn’t it?  I remember that a lot of people stopped to take pictures at this point.  Most of the girls were pretty stoked about finally having the opportunity to employ the canoe emoji.  It’s the little things.  We ended up rowing right next to Dr. Williams for a while.  In true honors-student fashion, Kristen and I were determined to outrun (outpaddle?) him.  He politely reminded us that it’s not a race, before swiftly gaining on us and leaving us in his dust.  After that, I decided that it truly was not a race.  Not a race I was going to win, anyway.  Again, Kristen and I managed to find solace in the fact that we weren’t last.

Well, we spoke too soon.  We ended up in the very back of the pack somehow and that is where we managed to stay for the duration of the trip.  But it was okay.  It was peaceful back there.  By far my favorite event of the night was when we rounded the corner and got the view of the illuminated skyline.  Sometimes I forget how beautiful our city can be. 

Although I will admit, a close second for that "favorite moment" title came when we were all pooped from the trip and it was time to load the canoes into the cars and go home.  All the men grabbed the boats and started heaving and stacking.  Meanwhile, all the women of the trip stood by, watching on the sidelines, providing moral support.  It just goes to show: everyone's a feminist...until they have to lift heavy objects.

I am not an outdoorsy person, so I was honestly a little dubious about how this whole experience would go.  But it was actually so much fun.  There’s nothing quite like that river breeze hitting your face when you start to get a good rowing rhythm going.  Despite creepy forests and the eight bug bites that I somehow ended up accumulating during the excursion, I have every intention of coming back for a midnight paddle.   

As long as they can get enough people to sign up for it, that is.

A Public Apology to Mark Twain

I’m man enough to admit when I’m wrong. 

And I have to say, I was wrong about hating this book so much.

Now, don’t get crazy.  It is by no means in my top twenty.  But I will confess that Huck Finn is much better than I remember it being in sophomore year of high school.  (Now that I think about it, I really shouldn’t rely on any opinions that were formed in sophomore year of high school.)  I remember the language irritating me a lot more the first time I read it.  Perhaps with age I have developed a greater appreciation of unique writing styles.  Maybe I have just grown more patient.  Or maybe I was just a big complainer in high school.  Let’s be honest.  It was probably just that.

If there is one thing I think we can all agree on, it’s that it is much better than Tom Sawyer.  If for nothing else than the fact that Huck is so much more of a sympathetic character.  Tom is kind of an idiot.  I kind of just want to shake him.  Sure, his creativity, cleverness, and thirst for adventure are commendable, and you can’t help but admire him for his cunning ability to rope some poor sap into whitewashing a fence for him.  But he insists on doing everything the hard way.  The scene in which Tom and Huck are trying to free Jim from the Phelps’ captivity is physically painful to read.  Huck wants to use common sense and do things the easy way, while Tom believes that there isn’t any “fun” in the easy way.  The easy way is not meant to be fun.  It is meant to be easy.

But I digress.

I don’t think I truly appreciated the themes in this book the first time around.  It is fascinating to see Huck’s “sound heart” start to come in conflict with his “deformed conscience” and the cognitive dissonance that ensues.  It is almost scary to think about how much society and the people around us influence our thoughts and behaviors, without us ever even realizing it.  Anyone familiar with the Milgram experiment knows that it is just in our nature to trust those in authority.  Even as a self-identified skeptic, I’ll be the first to admit that humans are an inherently trusting species.  Just like Fox Mulder, we want to believe that the people around us are good people.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t always happen that way.  And sometimes you just get a feeling deep down that what you have been taught all your life may not actually be correct. 

I realize that it may not be exactly the same thing as Huck realizing that racism is actually bad, but I remember when I started to actually question the things that I had always been raised to believe.  It was actually kind of exciting.  It was like (queue Disney music) a whole new world.  But it was also a bit disconcerting.  You start to watch your words a bit more carefully, and you wonder what your family and friends would think if they knew you were having these divergent thoughts.  Obviously, now, I could not care less what other people think of my opinions, but especially for someone Huck’s age, the approval of his family and peers are deeply important.  It shows a lot of courage and strength of character for him to break free from his socially-constructed conscience and start embracing his gut instincts about basic human decency.  It may not seem very revolutionary to us now, but at the time, Huck’s actions would have been truly scandalous.

            Would I call Huck Finn the “Rosa Parks of his time”?  I think that would be a bit of a stretch.  But would I say that he was a brave young boy with a big heart that we could all stand to learn a lesson or two from?  Now that, I can get on board with.

Who Doesn't Love a Good Tarantino?

“Kill Bill is my favorite movie.”

Wait, what?

“Volumes 1 and 2. American Gangster is a close second.”

It was at this point in the conversation that I saw a whole new side of Alejandra.  Here I was, sitting across the booth from this petite, soft-spoken young woman who is expressing her love of Tarantino movies, and you might say that I was more than a little taken aback.  But don’t get me wrong, I was loving it.  She also said that there was a good month or so where she watched Kill Bill every day and apparently her ex was extremely aggravated by this.  I didn’t want to pry, but I can’t help but think that there might be a correlation between that event and the fact that he is now her ex. 

I must admit, I was more than a little nervous when it came time to first meet my conversation partner.  I mean, I can barely hold a conversation with a native English speaker, much less a non-native one.  I will admit, it was a bit awkward at first.  But once we were out of the Chick-fil-A line—a place that is not at all conducive to forging friendships—things went much smoother. 

She originally hails from Monterrey, Mexico, about a nine-hour drive from here.  Her family, including her parents and little brother, moved to the DFW area six years ago.  She decided to move here as well only a short time ago because she hated being so far away from them.  I honestly felt a little uncomfortable asking her how old she was.  Some women can be touchy about such things.  But honestly, she could have been anywhere from 15 to 35.  I had to know, so I finally just got up the nerve and asked.  She happened to be right in the middle of the two, actually, at a still very youthful 24.

“And you’ll never guess my profession.”

After an introduction like that, I honestly didn’t even care to venture a guess. 

“I'm a physician!”

She was right.  I never would have guessed that.  I mean, she still looks like a fetus; how could she possibly have a medical license already?  She continued saying that she was in the Intensive English Program so that she could pass the TOEFL and get into dermatology school in the U.S.  I was pretty impressed.  That’s a lucrative field.  Yes, yes, it may be her “passion” or whatever, but most importantly, she will be raking in the dough.  She couldn’t argue with that.

After the small talk subsided, I asked her a question that I like to ask all of my friends who are from out of the country.  What is the biggest difference you notice between where you’re from and the U.S.?  I find that it often yields some fascinating insights.  She had to think about it for a moment.  But finally, she came to the conclusion that the starkest contrast she noticed was the differing perceptions of time.  When Americans tell you a time, they expect you to arrive at that time, if not a bit earlier.  In Mexico, if someone tells you that something starts at a particular time, they will fully expect you to arrive one to two hours later.  They are just much more laid back when it comes to these types of things.  This honestly baffles the anal-retentive part of me.  Just tell the person the actual time you want them to arrive, and there will never be any confusion.  Perhaps that is why she arrived fifteen minutes late for our meet-up.  I was willing to chalk it up to cultural differences and shrug it off.  This time.

Or heck, for all I know, she could have made the whole thing up to explain away her tardiness.  I wouldn’t be surprised.  We Americans can be an easy bunch to fool.