Dark Hours

The best thing about going to a 4:30 movie (other than it was a really good movie) was that Henry and I felt young. Even though nobody flinched when we got the Senior discount. (For the record, I just got grandfathered in, so to speak, as the true Senior's companion).

In the garage, we got detained helping an elderly couple -- he had a walker, she was wearing some sort of oxygen mask -- get into their car. I've told you before, Henry is pathologically kind, and folks in need seem to find him, like homing pigeons. We didn't mind the hold up, except that the movie was about to start and we didn't have tickets yet. Luckily, when you're way on the younger end of the Senior crowd, a leisurely walk up the stairs is just as good as a sprint, and we managed to snag ourselves some decent seats.

The movie -- The Darkest Hour -- opened silently. Well except for the rustling of Henry's popcorn bag and the occasional loud wonderings in the elderly audience about why the sound was off. Eventually, the on-screen dialogue began, Henry finished his popcorn, and I settled in to lose myself in whatever thoughts the story conjured up. I was in Britain in the early 1940's, an ordinary citizen plodding through my ordinary days in a slow motion fog while a madman was getting dangerously close and a bunch of stodgy old white men determined my fate. Somehow, a fat ornery guy in a pink bathrobe took the helm.

I'm a bit rusty on my history (if I ever really knew it in the first place) and I'm terrible about remembering the details but the past fascinates me in its extraordinary potential for repetition. We humans have a fairly limited repertoire; the styles change, the technology changes, the "buttons" get bigger -- but the cast of characters remains constant. Unlikely heroes, wisdom in simplicity, folly in supposed wisdom, and a surprisingly delayed reaction to a building avalanche of evil.

We live in dangerous times, and we need a fat ornery guy in a pink bathrobe to take the helm. Somebody with a brain and a heart. At the very least, we need a malignant narcissist who lacks any shred of decency to be removed, before it's too late. We need someone who would ride on a train with regular people without fear of infection, with a true desire to hear what they think. We need someone who might seem cruel in his demand for perfection from his secretary but will tear up when he learns her story, and will take time to explain what's going on behind the scenes, when she knows enough to be frightened but not enough to understand how frightened she needs to be. We need someone whose spouse, behind the scenes, loves him despite the sacrifices she has had to make, or maybe because of them, and knows better than anybody that he is the best person to take care of everybody else. Somebody whose wife doesn't recoil when he grabs her hand, whose wife is able to keep a loving smile on her face without the help of Botox.

I like to think that somebody, or a group of somebodies, or maybe all of us who just ride the train or disappear into our invisibility every day, will rise up and stop the avalanche before it's too late. I want to be around to properly claim my Senior discount, to watch with envy as young kids in their late fifties and early sixties sprint past me. I think about this, as I sit comfortably in a movie theater, munching on popcorn, hoping the whispering will stop so I can pay attention to the story, and everything it conjures up.