I Want To Hold You So Hear Me Out, I Want To Show You What Love's All About, Darling Tonight, Now I've Got You In My Sights

--"Hungry Eyes", Eric Carmen

I remember in junior high how much the Dirty Dancing soundtrack was ever present. Every birthday party I went to, every school dance--I heard the whole soundtrack ad infinitum it seems like. I knew the movie had to be popular on the basis of this fact alone, but for me it just wasn't one of those films I was dying to see. I wanted to see it. I just figured it was one of those films that I assumed I would see eventually.

Well, nineteen years later I was finally able to watch it from start to finish this past weekend. That has got to be a world record for procrastinating on a movie. I don't know what it took me so long, but I finally got that off of the laundry list of movies I've always wanted to see, but just never got around to it. I thought it was good. It was what I thought it was, a movie that appealed to my romantic sensibilities with a great soundtrack and typically Hollywood in the 80s. From the "No one puts baby in the corner" line to the requisite move that cannot be pulled off the very end (cf: Pamchenko in The Cutting Edge), it was a definite feel-good film. It won't be making any of my top ten lists, but it will be something that I'd stop to watch again if I ever got it on cable or something. At the very least, it's something I'm glad to have seen.

I think the problem with me was that I always associated with junior high at St. Rita's. Indeed, one of my most vivid memories is of getting blindsided by this soundtrack at my first boy/girl party. As if it weren't bad enough that my friends told me it would just be the five of us, when in reality they had invited the whole class, I was forced to be again and again reminded of how shy I was with each passing song on this soundtrack. There I was, the epitome of a wallflower, being repeatedly asked if I wanted to dance and having to discern an acceptable manner in which to tell the young lady no. I just couldn't do it when it was that young. I thought I would make a fool out of myself and cause a scene. In actuality, my being the only one not dancing made me stand out even more. And through it all, Dirty Dancing songs played all throughout the night (now that I'm pondering it, I'm kind of wondering why no one else thought to bring another album to the party). I guess you could say that album was the soundtrack to my own quivering heart.

It's rather idiotic to hold a movie accountable for one's own frailties, but when you're as superstitious as I am, you start blaming the external circumstances than something internal. Not that I consciously said I'll never watch that movie. But I think the idea that every time I thought of Dirty Dancing I was reminded of what a insecure fifth or sixth grader came rushing back to mind. I really think it took this long for me to separate the two from one another.


I feel the magic between you and I

Like I said, I enjoyed the movie. The reason for that, I believe, is that for the first time I could take a look at it as an entity unto itself rather than as part of my adolescent experience. It's no longer the symbol of that five-year period in my life where everything was confusing and it seemed like all the rules were changing for the worse when it come to friendships and relationships with my friends and the rest of my class.

It's not the albatross I once thought it was.

It's just a good movie to watch now.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers