Friday nights, when we’re in Nevada, Hubs plays poker on the Strip. While he’s gone I’ll be writing, and afterward, I’ll clear my head by watching some silly fluff on Netflix–any ‘girly’ thing I can find that I know he’d heckle at if he were sitting next to me. The one I found last night was called “The Keeping Hours,” and I have to tell you—it was pure schmaltz. In fact, it was so schmaltzy that if Nicholas Sparks were to see it, he’d say, “My god, this is schmaltzy—who writes this kind of schmaltz?”
And get this—even though this film was made in 2017, the recurring background song was Roberta Flack’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
Yep. Really. The last time I heard that song, the boy I was with was wearing bell bottoms. But this film was just what I wanted, and it was well produced, and the actors did a fine job, playing their parts in the spirit in which the story was written, so well they’ve probably earned a guest spot on “This is Us.” So, by the time Hubs got back, it was nearing its end, and had done its work. I was crying.
The alarm on his face at that lasted only the seconds it took for him to register the theme song. Then his lip curled in disgust. “Oh, jeez—is this what you do while I’m out playing poker—you sit here and watch this kind of crap?”
I paused the film, but I was still sniffling, still in the zone. “Their little boy died right at the beginning. He was so cute.”
“Oh, come on! Are you kidding me? Do you know the kind of night I had? The Rockies lost, and I got a bad beat that wiped me out on top of that. Now I come home to this?”
That got my back up. “You’ve been in this room for ten seconds. You don’t even know what this film is about. You’re so judgmental.”
He smiled and pointed to the paused frame on the screen. Which just happened to be of a woman and small child embracing, rays of bright sunlight beaming out from behind them. But he didn’t even comment on that. Instead he countered with, “Was that Roberta Flack I heard?”
It was a matter of pride now. I was not going to acquiesce. “So, what if it was? That tells you nothing about this film. It’s just… the song that happened to be playing when you walked in. That’s all.”
He looked at me with a straight face. “Did you know that song was written for a cat?”
“No it wasn’t. You’re making that up.”
“Nope. Just some trivia I read somewhere. The woman who wrote the lyrics to that song wrote it for one of her cats. One of her MANY cats.” He paused to let that sink in. “The next time you cry when you hear it, I want you to remember that—that you’re crying over a song a cat lady wrote. I’m going to bed.”
It was a great exit line. But guess what? I just looked it up. And he lied. It was not at all written for a cat.
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