My Life as a Movie

I've been thinking a lot lately about how much my life is NOT like a movie. If it were, my daily activities and interactions would have drastically different outcomes. Take yesterday, for example.

I went to jury duty, where I spent 4.5 hours reading about Chase Headley on my phone (go Padres!) and finally finishing The Picture of Dorian Gray. In the end there was no need for jurors, so I never got called up. I thus fulfilled my duty to my country by sitting in a spectacularly uncomfortable chair for half a day. Thrilling.

If my life were a movie, however, I would have reported for duty and found myself on the jury for the recently apprehended mobster James "Whitey" Bulger. I would have played an integral part in applying justice to a man charged with numerous counts of murder (19, to be exact), extortion, and other unsavory acts. Exciting, no?

But alas, my life is not a legal drama.

Still, my chances for a Hollywood storyline were still relatively good when I left the courthouse yesterday. After all, I live in a big, historical city. Plus I'm a journalist, and we're always protagonists in romantic comedies (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Never Been Kissed, Runaway Bride, 13 Going on 30, One Fine Day, Hitch, 27 Dresses, His Girl Friday, etc., etc., etc.).

So when I went over to the North End to get lunch at Ernesto's and met a cute guy, I should have been good to go. He saw the indecision on my face as I struggled to choose between the Old School pizza and the Sicilian pizza, and he started talking to me. He made a suggestion and even offered to let me sit as his table (and there were totally open tables at the time, btw). So when he got up and left without asking for my number or giving me his, I realized (again) that my life isn't a movie. If it were, we would have instantly started a relationship that would have lasted forever (not including, of course, the weeks or months somewhere in the middle that we would have spent apart, quietly pining for each other, after some big drama temporarily came between us).

But sadly, my life is not a romantic comedy either.

After lunch yesterday, I went home to my apartment and took a nap. Then I played on the computer, ate dinner, and did the dishes before sitting down to watch Drop Dead Diva while I ate an entire pint of Ben & Jerry's "Half Baked" in one sitting.

It was at that moment that I realized that my life is like a movie. See, my life is the beginning of the movie, the part where the protagonist lives alone, has very few friends and no love interest, and is just generally kind of lame. It's the part of the movie that sets the stage for the action soon to come.

At first this realization depressed me. After all, I thought my life was the stagnant, depressing part of a movie, and those are never the scenes people love and remember. But the more I thought about it, the more I decided my life is the potential-filled, preparatory stage of a movie, the time when the audience anticipates the exciting, life-altering events that are about to happen. And though I have no idea what those events will be or where they will lead me, I refuse to believe that they aren't coming.

And in the meantime, I am enjoying my life. True, it's not filled with movie-esque excitement or drama. But it doesn't need to be. I've watched enough films over the years to know that the opening scenes of a movie, though not necessarily exhilarating, are nevertheless crucial. They set the stage for everything to come, and if you sleep through them you'll never appreciate what comes next.

So in a new summer resolution (those should totally exist, btw), I have decided to have as much fun as I can in this stage of my "movie." And when I find out what kind of movie it is, I'll let you know. My vote is a musical rom-com adventure, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.