Blog 91: THE Moment!

“When you realise you’ve found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with…you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible” Billy Crystal as Harry in the movie “When Harry Met Sally”.

It’s New Years Eve. He’s done everything that should be fun and none of it is. So he goes for a walk. Somewhere on this walk his mind turns to ‘Her’. The more he thinks about her the more his walk turns into a run. It has dawned on him. Over a decade in the process and he now knows it for a fact… they were NEVER friends. He can’t run fast enough, in fact no mode of transport is fast enough. It is the ultimate run. He has to get to her by the stroke of midnight. Late but ever hopeful, he arrives where she is, gate crashes her party … but she’s not that receptive. She asks: Why are you here?..Why NOW?..Why is this all about you all the time…Jeez! After all this time couldn’t this wait for a better moment! Then he delivers that line.

That killer line… that bloody line that imparts the wisdom that once you realise you’ve found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you have to tell them straight away, the moment the realisation dawns, not because it’s all about you but because if they feel the same way why waste anymore time?

DAMN YOU HARRY MET SALLY!!!

You have no idea how much that last sentence hurt. When Harry Met Sally was the 1980’s most important comedy. We had to wait till 1989 for it… but it was worth waiting a whole decade to see Rob Reiner’s masterpiece that just told it as it is. No one writes a script like Nora Ephron….it was touching, it was hilarious but above all it was honest. Men loved it, Women loved it. The media loved it. I recall the review in the Sunday Telegraph saying “If you don’t enjoy this film ask someone to check your pulse, you may be dead”. Over twenty years later it remains one of the most quoted movies, and despite being made in the decade that taste forgot has not become dated and still gets audiences. Over all this is one of my all time favourite movies…so to say DAMN YOU to this movie…means that something has happened in Jax World and yes, Harry Met Sally is to blame.

I don’t know why, but Men in particular have a problem with understanding that movies are not real. The whole concept that lines belong in a script kind of missed them.

In a movie, there is a plot. Because of this it doesn’t really matter that it takes Harry 11 years to realise that Sally is the love of his life. Because THAT was the only place the movie could go. Nora Ephron wrote it that way. It starts with the pronouncement that Men and Women cannot be friends. It shows us that they can’t be friends because men and women are so different, then we travel for over a decade through a ‘friendship’ and arrive back where we started proving that men and women can’t be friends but this time because they need each other.

BUT IT’S A MOVIE.

You try running though the streets of any major city on New Years Eve, you try gate crashing a party (esp. while inappropriately dressed), you try finding ANY woman who would be receptive to the idea that it’s now okay despite the hurt and rejection that he has processed your relationship and decided “It’s YOU…It was always YOU”

Ummmmm……… NO! Not happening.

At least not in JaxWorld… at least NOT at 2.45am. Not when there has been silence for a couple of years, not when wounds have been licked healed and we thought everyone has moved on.

Ever had one of those days when you just want it to end?

Yesterday started with a threat from a government department, continued into a fine from the local library, segued into an extortionate transport fine, continued into an over priced taxi ride and ended with burnt pizza.

I tried to make it better by watching series one of “Gavin and Stacey” on DVD… but even that didn’t help. So I remade my bed with freshly laundered sheets and called it a night.

Sleep is precious to me as I don’t get much of it. I sleep on average for 3-4 hours, however when emotional exhausted I’ve been known to get a good 6 or 7 … and man after the day I’d had, I was ready for the big sleep.

Of course, when you reach a certain age – you can’t unplug or turn off land lines and mobiles as there are a zillion reasons why you may need to be contacted in the wee hours. However, amongst us grown ups there is a kind of watershed in place. 10am-9pm is agreed as general opening hours for chit-chat. 9pm – 12am is kind of tolerated for calls of a more pressing nature. Impairment damaged calls (i.e.: drunken) can be forgiven if made before 1am. But if either phone rings after 1am it is taken that an emergency has occurred. (Though I’d go one further… you’d better be Police, Ambulance or Fire Brigade as bloody hell…CAN’T IT WAIT???!!!)

But no. It couldn’t wait. For him 02.48… was the exact moment when it dawned on him that it’s true… men and women cannot be friends, that it wasn’t a friendship after all... that she should know that he has realised something and she should hear it RIGHT NOW!

At 02.48 this morning, after years of ‘friendship’, road-trips, and long haul holidays had turned into betrayals, rejection, hurt and finally silence… THAT was the time to do a “Harry”.

At 02.48 that is when it was judged the moment to let me know the moment he knew.

At 02.48.

In life, unlike in a movie… life goes on. Whilst our hero makes his mind up that only our heroine will do… she’s not awaiting him for her next cue. Life goes on. I had not spoken to him for years. I can’t help wondering why, of all the many moments of time that made up all those years, why on earth twelve minutes before three on Sunday morning is the moment. The moment when I get told. What on earth was I supposed to say at 02.48??

When you are awoken at 02.48, unlike a movie, there are no words pre written in a script to deliver.

I’m afraid life is not a movie. In a movie… 02.48 is a romantic gesture. In real life a call at 02.48 is an annoyance.

I would have thought given the intelligence of the person concerned that no one would need a scriptwriter to predict that calling at 02.48 to tell someone whose life you exited years ago that you love them was never gonna be a scene that plays out well.

But I’ll leave real life to your imagination. But given he thinks life is a movie….I think I’ll just hand over to Nora Ephron’s brilliant script…

Harry Burns: Would you like to have dinner?... Just friends.

Sally Albright: I thought you didn't believe men and women could be friends.

Harry Burns: When did I say that?

Sally Albright: On the ride to New York.

Harry Burns: No, no, no, I never said that... Yes, that's right, they can't be friends. Unless both of them are involved with other people, then they can... This is an amendment to the earlier rule. If the two people are in relationships, the pressure of possible involvement is lifted... That doesn't work either, because what happens then is, the person you're involved with can't understand why you need to be friends with the person you're just friends with. Like it means something is missing from the relationship and why do you have to go outside to get it? And when you say "No, no, no it's not true, nothing is missing from the relationship," the person you're involved with then accuses you of being secretly attracted to the person you're just friends with, which you probably are. I mean, come on, who the hell are we kidding, let's face it. Which brings us back to the earlier rule before the amendment, which is men and women can't be friends.

DAMN YOU HARRY MET SALLY!!!

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