In talking with my husband recently I discovered that we both have our own deeply meaningful childhood stories that have to do with the movie "West Side Story" - total accidental memory recovery, a little bit like what led to me posting our twin experiences in "Everybody Has a Swimming-Pool Story" ~ http://www.yousurecantalkbaby.blogspot.com/2011/06/everybody-has-swimming-pool-story.html).
I was at the house of my parents' friends and I guess I was bored while the adults had what I now know of as a "dinner party." I have no idea where my many siblings were, but what I do know is I watched TV (probably resentfully, because no one was paying attention to me!) and all was regular joe-status quo but then - I switched the channel from an episode of Star Trek that I think I found somewhat creepy, tuning in magically mid-way through the movie "West Side Story" and - everything changed for me.
I was immediately & completely captivated. "It all began tonight, I saw you and the world went away" - "But here you are and what was just a world is star, Tonight!" OMG was ever an impressionable, dramatic, headstrong 7 or 8? year old more in love with love, after seeing that?!
I think this movie (for better or for worse, probably worse), informed a lot of my ideas of what romantic love would be like. You see the handsome stranger across the crowded room (yah, like the song, I know), and everything narrows down to just the two of you. And you're instantly in perfect love forever and ever, amen.
I watched as much of West Side Story (WSS) as I could, but at some point the adult party was over and it was time to go home. I probably kicked and screamed to be parted from my movie, but the worst part? They didn't let me stay up to watch it when we got home, they enforced bedtime, as if it were just any other night. An injustice I will never forget.
This of course was before the age of VCRs (remember them?), so we couldn't just run out the next weekend and "rent it" - and therefore my care-worn exasperated parents probably insisted it would be on T.V. again, I could see how the movie ended some other time, it was late, it was a school night, whatever. But my undaunted & anguished cry most surely was "WHEN?!?" I eventually did see WSS in full but I don't remember exactly when...it may have actually been years later, and it had probably lost a bit of its original "charge" by then. :)
My husband has another WSS story...and just as my story paints this tiny portrait of me, so his does of him. He was at the house of his parents' friends also, but he was older - maybe ten - and he had already seen the movie (in full, no doubt). Being similarly ignored by the adults doing their own thing, he found something to occupy himself, which was to hang out with the family dog.
Of course, that is the saddest part of the story - how his parents always had better things to do than pay attention to him, how they treated him a bit like "luggage" they carted around, without ever asking him what he felt or wanted to do. As a very kind Aunt of David's once noticed, and actually said to him. It was true, we will both never forget it, and David did his best never to treat his own son that way. (In fact, David's own parenting style evolved mainly out of remembering how he himself was parented - and then always at least trying to do the exact opposite.)
Even just being baggage, young David loved going over to this particular neighbor's house mostly because they had a beautiful golden retriever. He was always drawn to animals, especially dogs. He once told me in a letter (early in our relationship, when we were briefly living in different states), that he loved their "know-all and tell-nothing eyes" which was kind of my "you had me at hello" moment, but that's maybe another blog post. :)
This sweet gentle dog sat there and probably panted and drooled and loved all over David as he recounted the entire plot of the movie. I can just picture it: "Riff went to Tony and said 'ya gotta come to the dance' and so Tony went to the dance and there he met Maria....and afterwards Tony wandered the street yelling her name and then he found her! on the fire-escape and they talked and sang...and then later there was a fight and Bernado killed Riff! And then Tony killed Bernado, but he didn't mean to..."
For David it wasn't the romance, or it wasn't the obvious romance that we all think of as the heart of the story, the one between Maria and Tony - the one that got me yearning for love at such a young age, long before I read the original Romeo and Juliet story. For David it was the romance of being free on the streets of a big city, able to come and go as you please, having a life that's your own.
Basically the idea of being a real person, instead of a piece of luggage.
After seeing WSS, David fantasized about running away to New York and joining a gang because it looked like a real family to him - and definitely had something going on that was missing at home. When he innocently asked his mother "do they have gangs in Milwaukee?" she actually had a moment of pretty good parenting (PGP) when she responded succinctly: "Yes, but not like New York."
So, we had very different experiences of the movie WSS and different things we took away. But he, like me, discovered the soundtrack in his parents' collection of records and listened to it over and over, memorizing the words to all the songs:
When You're a Jet, You're a Jet all The Way ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9z33lasnkU
I LOVED the dance scene at the gym - the music and that girl in the ice-blue dress (how she moved!) were the epitome of cool to me - not to mention totally hot Rita Moreno in purple ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aenJ5V43Xvk
I guess what this all means, is that David and I are going to have to get the DVD and watch it together. Me in charge of my own bedtime at last - he with someone who can share the joy & anguish of this amazing film, and actually answer back in more than woofs. It's about time he and I both get what we need and wanted around WSS!
Saturday, April 21, 2012
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