David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

love

Sharing ridiculous things we enjoy is a special part of being in love

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I haven’t seen “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” in a long time. It’s not a film classic that comes to mind when people ask about my favorite movies.

It’s more like the comedy equivalent of junk food. The premise is ridiculous. The story is unbelievable. The protagonist is embarrassing. The supporting cast is filled with actors who will look vaguely familiar to anybody who’s seen enough very old sitcoms.

But it’s a movie that makes me happy. It makes me laugh like the child I was when I first saw it on late-night television years and years ago.

I’ve been wanting to watch it again recently, but I haven’t. I downloaded a copy and started, but I turned it off quickly — because I realized that I didn’t want to watch the movie as much as I simply wanted to share it with someone I love.

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Personal growth feeds a romance, but lack of honesty destroys love

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I was already in love with Amy, so her sudden outburst surprised me.

We were in Washington, D.C., for a film festival and I was happy to have Amy come with me. We arrived Friday evening just in time for the first screenings of the festival. My film wasn’t showing until Saturday, so our schedule was flexible.

I had printed maps — this was in the days before ubiquitous and reliable GPS on the phone — but when we got to a street near the Pentagon, something about the street had changed. Or maybe the directions were wrong. I followed the directions as written, but they quickly brought us in a loop right back to where we had been.

I thought it was funny. It didn’t seem like a big deal. It just seemed like a minor problem to solve. But she exploded.

“Why would you not have a better map than this?!” she shrieked with anger. “I would have had backup maps! This shouldn’t happen!”

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No loneliness is worse than being with people, but not a specific one

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This has happened to me before. It will happen again. Maybe it’s happened to you.

I got into my car Wednesday evening after a long day at work. Nothing earth-shattering happened, but it was busy. Interesting things happened. OK, more like “mildly interesting” things. But as I absentmindedly left the I-65 ramp to merge onto I-459 heading home, I picked up my iPhone to make a call. And then I stopped.

What was I doing? Oh, yeah. I picked up the phone to call her.

It wasn’t a conscious impulse. Nothing in me decided it was finally time to call her out of the blue. It was just an automatic reflex of my body to a yearning that I’m accustomed to squelching all the time.

Oh, yeah. We don’t talk anymore. I can’t call her. I can’t tell her what happened today. And I felt it again — that painful jolt that hits my nervous system every time this happens — as though something inside dies once more to realize how things really are.

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