Strongly Worded

If My Life Were Two Movies ...

I'd be played by either Winona Ryder or Jennifer Love Hewitt, and the film would be an indie success heralded at Cannes.

Movie #1
Last Friday night, after seeing the musical Wicked with my friend E., the subway shut down because of a fire at Harvard station. We were told that a shuttle bus would be arriving immediately to get us on our way. We stood in a crowd outside the station and waited for ages. In the mean time, we hooked up with two random strangers (Emily and Matt) who were also headed to Central Square (our destination). We tried in vain to procure and share a cab (of course all the cabs were snapped up by other similarly stranded people). Eventually the shuttle bus arrived and they disappeared into the night.

If my life were a movie, Emily would be an heiress being chased down by thugs (or a high-brow prostitute trying to escape her ruthless employer), and the cab driver would swerve along the streets trying to get her to safety, and we’d all end up bonding under a bridge in Revere, our faces reflected in the puddles. After displays of valor by all of us, and a cinematic exposition about the kindness of strangers, Matt would fall madly in love with me, and we’d kiss under said bridge. Then the film would flash forward to our wedding, held at Emily’s newly thug-free/ pimp-free mansion.

Movie #2
On Monday night, I (wo)-manned the registration table at an event for female Jewish professionals, held at Hebrew College. After an hour or so of distributing name tags to Mitzi Goldberg, Sarah Rosenkrantz, et. al., the crowd thinned and I sat there by myself waiting for stragglers. An exceptionally hot (but secular-looking) professor rambled by, and asked about the event. We engaged in 3 minutes of banter, after which he returned to his class.

If my life were a movie, I would have lingered outside of his classroom until he finished teaching. He’d come out, smile at me, and I’d ask if he wanted some help with his homework. Or whether he was up for a study break. And then there would be all this footage of us in the kosher cafeteria eating bagels, and then the sun would rise outside the window, and then we’d flash forward to our wedding by the wailing wall in Jerusalem. I’d be wearing a mantilla-type veil. People would dance the hora and lift us up in chairs.

Posted by Dori at 10:21 AM