As much as I would like to think that I’m not a fan of sappy movies, I am. Granted, my dad usually finds in me a willing movie-buddy when a new action film comes out, but I’d just as soon watch a Meg Ryan chick flick (well, maybe not Kate and Leopold). So imagine my glee this summer when I learned that my friend had never seen When Harry Met Sally. My initial reaction was more shock than glee, but the delight came after I realized this gave me the perfect excuse to watch it again?and with a neophyte, no less!
When the time came, I was all set for another ultimate movie-viewing experience. The popcorn was popped and steaming out of the paper bag I’d poured it in to simulate the proper theater ambience. The DVD was in the player and cued to the “play movie” option of its menu. As far as I knew, we were good to go. The movie started off well. We laughed in all the right places from the duo’s initial road trip to Sally’s orgasmic deli sandwich. Somewhere along the way, though, I got lost. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy the movie as much, seeing it for the thousandth time, and it wasn’t that I was too tired to really focus on it. It was more as if something struck a chord in me. It took me a few days and an abhorrent car washing to finally figure out what my subconscious had noticed.
The car that I’d agreed to keep bright and shiny was sitting in the driveway under a thick film of dust, courtesy of the Chicago-area road “rehabilitation.” The key detail of this situation was that the grimy accumulation had been piling up for nearly two months. Even I, who will quite willingly abstain from any future math classes, knew that two months of driving through construction zones plus zero car washings did not equal a squeaky clean car. Having stretched my auto-negligence to the last possible day, I faced two choices: take it to the carwash or get out the hose, a few rags and wash it myself. Since I’m of the opinion that I can find plenty of things more worthwhile to spend $6 on than an automated carwash, I went with the second option. I wasn’t even halfway through with the job before the thoughts popped into my head.
“This stinks, you should have just taken it to Superwash.”
“Why are you wasting your day off doing this?”
“What’s the big deal? It’s only $6 and it’s not like you take it to be washed everyday.”
I was hardly past my second hubcap when there was a break in my mental complaining and it hit me. I realized the reason why my mind had kept going back to the middle of When Harry Met Sally for the past three days: All of Sally’s weird quirks, that I always laughed at, were mine too. As Harry explains, there are two kinds of women: high-maintenance and low-maintenance. Sally and I, however, make up the exception to this rule. We are “the worst kind.” Apparently, we are high-maintenance but think we’re low-maintenance. (It makes sense, now, that I didn’t see this before.) True, we’ve made one?or five?waiters roll their eyes with the nuances of our dinner order. So, we’ve been known to check after putting our letters in the mailbox to make sure they went down and didn’t get stuck in the chute. Maybe 71 degrees feels chilly to us, but that doesn’t mean we’re high-maintenance. I prefer to side with Sally in my explanation: I just want it the way I want it.
Really, what’s so bad about that? It’s one thing to be overly picky about everything, but it’s another to know you’re getting what you want. If I’m ordering a sandwich, I want a good amount of mustard?not too much so that it squirts out the sides, but not too little that you only get the taste of it in one bite. If I go to the store to get toothpaste and see that they are out of the Cool Mint Crest Dual-Action Whiten-ing, I’d rather squeeze a few more ounces out of my last tube than come home with a different kind. If the shoes I’m thinking about buying have a small splotch on the leather, regardless whether or not anyone else can see it, and it’s the only pair the store has in my size, I don’t bristle at the thought of asking the salesperson to call and try to find them at a different store. And yes, if the air conditioning in my house is turned to arctic blast (a.k.a. 72 degrees) I am going to put a sweatshirt on.
You may think I’m crazy and roll your eyes, but chances are you’re also probably cracking a smile. At least that’s how I prefer to think of it: I’m not neurotic, just oddly endearing. So serve me and Sally up a giant bowl of blue skies topped with a ragout of walks in an autumnal Central Park while Sinatra classics croon in the background. Just don’t forget the healthy portion of denial ? on the side.
Rachel Sierminski is in the College. She’s not sure what year she is, so don’t ask.
