The Grown Up Kids

I was watching Miracle on 34th Street today (actually watched it twice in a row because for some reason AMC is too lazy to program more than two movies a day) and was *astounded* at how quickly Dorey and Bryan “fell in love”, a feature of most romantic comedies and certainly the unvarying theme of all Hallmark movies without exception and even when about dogs. Despite having spent my fair share of nights in the early (and later not so early) years of my childhood planted on the sofa giggling along while Matilda (I really don’t know her by any other name) charms Santa and her father-to-be with brimming precociousness and an unusually cute face that I sometimes want to eat, I’ve never taken objection to and frankly never noticed this glaringly obtrusive trend before. For those of you who didn’t spend your childhood junked up on Christmas movies and bonbons smeared on your face, there is really only one thing that you need to know re Dorey and Bryan’s romantic relationship and that is, to oversimplify things, that they have only spoken a handful of times (I realize this may be contentious and some may say that they’ve been dating for as far as we know years, but to my discretion I’m pretty sure they met an hour before the movie started) come Thanksgiving and are married by Christmas. And yet up until my 22nd year of life I accepted this as normal if not laudable behavior. What?

Now, I don’t mean to preach about “media’s” destructive influence on society and give you some annoyingly pedantic essay that would make me hate myself as much as you would (although to be honest, I probably will do that sometime next week) but I really just want to know if and how movies are reflecting or influencing real life? Of course this conversation could go on forever and across an entire breadth of lifestyle modeling, but for relationships specifically, do the interpersonal patterns in movies affect how we play them out in our own lives? On the one hand I’m quick to point blame at them for what I see as a general tendency in couples to not know (or seriously care to know, or in “the right ways” (I hate me too, it’s ok)) each other before committing to serious undertakings, myself having been included. It seems more common than not that people unknowingly sustain their relationships on superficial pretenses and that it’s only a matter of time before the cracks fissure and you drop into hell—or my mom just told me that so I’d be celibate forever. But hoping it’s the former, maybe we’re doomed to this miserable forgone romance and our only salvation is in trade schools for the healing heart during which we brandish ourselves with symbols (“optimistic”, “hurt”, “healing”, “addicted to red meat” etc.) in order to attract compatible companions (which I’m pretty sure is an arranged marriage in which case we should all just get those).

Yet on the other hand, I think these subliminal movie messages can’t possibly have had any irreversible effect or else I would’ve married that guy I met in the hall once 10 years ago at the drinking fountain. Yet due to some divine intervention I’m happy to report that I’ve thus far dodged (or more likely was dodged by) every man that would have possibly taken me as his nearly teenage wife after one month of dating. Instead I enjoy yelling at Jonatan until we both cry, in addition to long walks to the delivery ice cream truck. Quite simply, it amazes and inspires me that I’m in a relationship in which I feel aggressively genuine, and seek to cultivate in an intentional way. If it were up to Hallmark I’d be married to some hick who for no reason wants to be my kid’s dad and likes when I make him waffles in pumps and a bustier. But here I am, androgynous as ever with a fierce suspicion of all men who don’t approve of my shredded underwear from the 6th grade, and I find myself with a person that is as comfortable being as inexcusably frumpy as I am, respects me as much as I respect myself, loves his family as much as I love mine, accepts me more than I can myself, and challenges me intellectually & emotionally every day except for when all we do is nothing + sugar and fat. So how do I reconcile my fear of having drank the romcom kool-aid for far too long and without warning, with finding myself, wits in tact, exploring a relationship that is deeply soul enriching and with no foreseeable plans to marry? Some might just say it’s a Christmas miracle.

(Also I’m 22, so…)

*P.S. I hate that this seems as sappy as it does, but I found these pictures of “said-relationship-person-Jono” today and thought I’d throw them in cuz, well…we like him 🙂