I’ve Never Seen the Princess Bride
“Could you just watch it for me? It's my favorite movie.”
She wasn’t pleading with me. Or even giving me the big puppy dog “obey me, boy” eyes that she occasionally did to annoy me.
It was just a simple request. Could I just sit with her and watch her favorite movie, The Princess Bride?
“Sorry. I’m taking this one to my grave.”
One of my pet peeves is people losing their shit because you haven’t consumed their favorite television show or album. The biggest one seems to be movies. Sorry, I haven’t seen Braveheart. Never watched The Godfather 1 or 2. (Though curiously I have seen The Godfather Part 3.) Napoleon Dynamite looks about as fun as a colonoscopy. Whatever list you have in your head of movies someone not only must have seen, but absolutely, unequivocally NEEDS to see… I may not have seen one or two of them.
The biggest blows seem to have come from my lack of watching The Princess Bride. Never seen it. I know what happens in it. I’ve seen scenes from it. Just never sat and watched the thing. It’s a movie. Who cares?
But when people hear that I haven’t seen this one movie, they act like I just told them their baby is ugly. It is always ridiculously over the top, capped with an explanation of how this movie will change my life.
And here’s the thing. If the movie was just on television in front of me, I would watch it. But there’s no way to win. I hate to tell you this, but a middle-aged man will not be moved to tears by Wesley and Buttercup. I will not give a flying fuck about Inigo Montoya or his bitch-ass father.
At best, I will like the movie. You were a child when you first saw it. It wouldn’t affect you the same way as an adult. And then I have to tell these people that their favorite film was only pretty good. Then we have a new reason for them to explode.
So after a fair number of these responses, I declared I will never fucking see their gahdamn favorite movie. I take a perverse glee in telling new people that their baby is ugly.
When she asked, I stuck to my guns. “Taking it to the grave”, I declared with a bit of smirk.
The thing is, when I told her no, she didn’t even fight about it. She just frowned and walked away.
I was in love with her. I never said it, because deep down, I knew she wasn't in love with me. But I knew it. I'd known it almost since the day we met. But I never said “I love you”.
Stereotypical man; what I was too afraid to say, I tried to show.
I was always there for her. In whatever way she needed. I was hers. And she knew that.
Looking back, it's easy to see the roadmap. Years of mistakes. I could tell you about all the ways that she hurt me or made me feel small. Her sins were many and manifest. But I wasn’t perfect either.
With the benefit of time and maturity, I can see all the things I did wrong.
For some reason, this one stuck with me. She loved The Princess Bride. It was her favorite film. She just wanted to share something she loved with her man. And I said no.
The sad part is that I hurt her and I wasn’t even trying to. It didn’t even register with me. This was part of my private joke that I was playing on the world at large. But this was the woman who had my heart and shared my bed. “It’s just a fucking movie. Who cares?” How many times have I said this to someone?
But if it was just a movie and it didn’t matter, why didn’t I just watch it with her?
It wasn’t about whether I would like it or whether I had seen it. It’s about what The Princess Bride meant to her and how it wasn’t just a rejection of a movie. It was a rejection of her.
Why couldn’t I see that?
I hope she never reads this. Or hell, maybe I do. I can no longer tell.
#theprincessbride #movies #inigomontoya #films #love #relationships
