Degree of Difference

As the thermometer we have from Radio Shack, part of a weather station we've had for years (and no, I have no idea what happened to the rest of it or if there ever (or even?) was a rest of it) topped off at 94.5 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday in the afternoon on the wall of our kitchen in our house in Norwich, Connecticut, all I knew was I wasn't going to get to my 10,000 steps for the day.

Mom raised crazy children but not stupid ones. Okay, that part actually began with my sister Evan, leaving me as the singular and limited combo edition but not even I am that much of a glutton for punishment and/or willing to don a ball cap and wander around outside.

I can't help but wonder where the hell all this heat was back in February when no one on the East Coast was searching for Nemo at all, but, rather, was shoveling that booger bastard off our steps, roofs and driveways. Global warming, if I may be permitted a criticism, needs to work on its timing. Yesterday I was more of a believer than Mickey Dolenz ever was.

Armed with the remote, I stretched out on our small couch, the one that allows me to lay out as Lennon purportedly did on a love seat in his living room in The Dakota, and prepared to hunt for something to watch. When I tell our kids about TV before remotes, I don't think they believe me.

I suspect neither has any memory of the tiny black and white TV in their shared room in our ground floor apartment on Ahornstrasse in Offenbach where they used to watch the Sandmannchen before I read them a story to put them to bed.

Yesterday my hunting was rewarded as I caught, from nearly the opening credits one of my favorite movies, filled with artifacts of a different America, and life than the ones we lead now, You've Got Mail. I, too, remember the interminable dial-up modem murmur and the visuals of the electronic handshake hoping for the payoff. (It always felt about that long until you heard it 'the voice' and I hope the guy they hired retired with enough money to have someone to read aloud all of his email.)  

I think in a previous life I was an eleven year old girl because I've always wanted Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan to be boyfriend and girlfriend. Not the mushy stuff, just the good parts. And for awhile they made a not inconsiderable number of movies, and quite the livelihood I imagine, from being just that in cinema.

Of course I adore the movie for them, and for the many small things I believe I remember of an America in transition, but mostly I watched it from beginning to end for the gentle whimsy and music Harry Nilsson who didn't write a note as part of the soundtrack but somehow did anyway, warm and wondrous and filled with everything you know.
-bill kenny