Umbrellas on the Subway

It’s not that I can’t take sad movies, or even sad scenes in movies. What I can’t take, though, to take a phrase from A Christmas Story (aka, “The Shoot Your Eye Out Movie” in my family unit) is: “Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at it's zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.” [Thank you, IMDb].

THAT’s the kind of sadness, albeit applied to less comedic movies than the aforementioned Christmas flick, I can’t bear.

I find those situations, where people are guilelessly happy, when they’re on top of the world…and get slammed hard-Hard-HARD so painful, so awful, I can’t watch. Or I try not to, anyway.

A good example is from Brokeback Mountain – it’s the scene where Jack Twist is driving at breakneck speed from Texas to Wyoming because he’s received a post card from Ennis, a postcard telling Jack he’s getting a divorce. Jack can’t stop smiling, he’s singing “King of the Road,” he really FEELS like the king of the road on this particular trip northward because he believes (misunderstands) that finally, he and Ennis can have their “ little cow and calf operation,” finally have that “sweet life” that he desired so. When he arrives at Ennis’s place, it becomes clear that he’s wrong, that Ennis has no such plans, and he gets emotionally socked in the gut – it’s as if all the light exits his eyes.

When I get to that part in the movie anymore, I skip the DVD forward, I just can’t bear to feel-with-him through that scene.

I’d mentioned the 1961 B&W movie Goodbye Again in a recent post. There’s a scene in there that I can’t bear, either. I haven’t started skipping through that part yet, but at some point, I will.

The young Phillip (25 years old) is taking Paula (age 40) out to the finest restaurant in Paris – he’s celebrating because, though his boss and co-conspirator of a mother have “decided” that he should return to NY because of his relationship with an older woman, he instead executed a sort of declaration of independence so he can remain in Paris and be with Paula (because he really, really does love her). He takes Paula out on the dance floor after ordering caviar and a magnum of champagne and he is happy, happy. But Phillip doesn’t realize that his Paula sees her former lover across the room, a man she still hasn’t gotten out of her heart.

He dances on, oblivious that the former lover is gradually dancing toward them. With his back to the goings-on of the former lover, Phillip doesn’t see that the man reaches out and takes Paula’s hand and that, in that moment, Paula mentally and emotionally leaves him and returns to her former lover.

Paula makes an excuse to leave the dance floor and it’s only as he’s returning to their table at the restaurant that Phillip looks back, then swings for a double-take, stares hard at the former lover and drops his head downward. He knows that Paula has seen him because of her hurried request to return to the dinner table. He knows that he’s lost her.

OH!!!! I can’t bear that scene, I tear up every time I see it.

ER and I have a phrase for events like this…or at least, I do…it’s called “leaving your umbrella on the subway.” It comes from a time ER and I were in DC and it was so, so hot…and there’s just no heat like DC in the summer. I can’t take heat or sun even in moderate doses, and I was desperate enough for some relief that I bought an umbrella. Not just any old umbrella, but a thirty-dollar umbrella from the Discovery Channel store in Union Station. It was what was available; it was so hot, I probably would have paid 50 bucks for an umbrella.

I’d used it once, I think. We went to Crystal City from Union Station and only after I’d exited the subway and the cars took off did I realize that I’d left my umbrella on the subway.

I had the same what-a-great-day-what-a-wonderful-world happiness early in the day on February 18, 2001, having bought a NASCAR cake and really put on the dog in terms of "yay, it's the Daytona 500 day" snacks. Yes, I had that same sort of happiness on the day Dale Earnhardt died. And that alone might be why I can’t bear to watch people leave their umbrellas on the subway.