The Day the Movies Changed

So, I'm downloading the Star Wars Theme for CVett to use for her one-act.  And the minute that music starts, I'm taken back, back, back to 1977, and sitting in a darkened movie theater that has long since been torn down.  I sit, anticipating a movie, that as a 17-year-old female, I've really heard very little about.  But I'm there.  What the heck.  A 25¢ box of popcorn and a box of milk duds.  A 100% real Coke (I didn't drink diet soda back then....).  The lights go down.  The music plays and the words role forward across the screen.  Then, literally, from behind my head, a small ship zips forward followed by an unbelievably massive imperial star destroyer--the roar of the ship coming from behind and all around, swallowing us up in intergalactic noise.  I actually looked up and behind to see where the ship was coming from.  It was just so...awesome.  Then the two robots:  "They'll be no escape for the princess this time...."  And really, the rest is history.

I need to put that theme song on my "Chris's Joy Music" CD.  It never fails to make me smile. 

A Different Year, Another Ice Storm

Years ago, at least ten years, when I was teaching, we woke up in the morning to find bad weather moving in.  But since IPS NEVER closed, my husband and I and our young son all went about our business, getting ready for school, and watched the front of plunging temperatures and freezing rain move from northwest to southeast across the center part of the state.  And then we watched as the schools closed almost as soon at the front touched them.  We waited, and watched.  Would ours be next?  Finally, too late to wait any longer, I got Charlie into the car and into his car seat and backed slowly out the driveway.  I had to make a stop to stick a letter in the mailbox.  I got out of the car and inched my way around it, holding on to what I could, moving towards the mailbox; but then I lost my footing, and would have slid completely UNDER the car, if I hadn't managed to grab on to the rear view mirror.  I could hear my phone ringing in the car.  I struggled back and managed to answer it before the caller hung up.  It was my husband shouting, "Come back!  Come back!  We closed!"  I laughed--"I haven't left yet.  I'm still at the mailbox!"  I got back in the car and pulled back into the driveway.  I'm sure the rest of the day was all fireplace and movies, a nice family day.  I just remember that pink front moving across the radar and the schools closing, and hoping against hope that ours would be next.  I think teachers like snow days better than the kids.