Many years ago, when my husband (and then boyfriend) and I were dating, I lived with a friend, who I’ll call “Deb.” Deb is my longest-standing friend at this time, and we have shared a thousand funny and poignant moments. One that I’ll always remember – and in fact, my husband and I still chuckle over – involves the movie The Big Chill.
The movie came out the summer Deb and I were dating our future husbands. We often double-dated, in fact. Deb had been talking about The Big Chill for weeks. She mentioned it nearly every day at least once, telling anyone who would listen that it was a great movie, people really liked it, and we should go see it. She really wanted to see that movie.
So one night, the four of us had been out to dinner and as we were leaving the restaurant, one of us suggested taking in a movie. When we naturally posed the question, “what should we see?” Deb quickly and innocently stated, “Someone said The Big Chill was good.”
This comment was met with hoots and guffaws from all of us. She looked entirely puzzled until I finally caught my breath and said, “You said that, Deb!” To her credit, she did laugh, too – and we went to see The Big Chill.
During that same time, my boyfriend and future husband used a number of funny expressions. One of these was “No way, moosebreath.” I never did have any idea from where he adopted that one, but it always made me smile.
Over the years, this expression (fortunately!) was lost among the many adventures we had. But last night, we were sitting around watching television and I asked him if he wanted to watch a Hallmark movie. He laughed and replied, “No way,” to which I naturally responded, “Moosebreath.”
All big eyes and innocence, he laughed and said, “Moosebreath? Who said that?” To which I replied, “YOU did, for heavens’ sake!”
He had the grace to look a bit embarrassed, but only a bit.
Then he had to remind me that I had the most embarrassing “who said that?” story of all time. About a decade ago, the movie “The King’s Speech” was released. We went to see it with good friends, and had a great time. It is, in fact, one of my all-time favorite movies. So you might assume that I would remember in great detail the first time I saw it. (Let me digress to say that we purchased the DVD and I’ve watched it at least a dozen times since then).
But just a few weeks after going to the theatre together, we were again out with those friends, talking about movies. I asked them “Have you seen The King’s Speech?” and they were dumbfounded. Finally, one of them said, “Yes, with you!” I was a bit embarrassed, but they were good-natured about it.
It was not such a smooth conversation when, about six months later, I actually purchased the DVD. The next time we were out with those friends, I was telling them about buying it and ended with “Have you seen it?”
Well, duh. Yes, moosebreath, we’ve seen it. And someone said it was good.
just trying to remember all the stuff over the years I have seen, people will ask if I remember certain scenes they remember and I am dumbfounded at how little I recall – often very little comes to mind – still trying to remember names of actors and characters in all these Potter and Lord of the rings and Marvel movies etc. get to be a bit much for this old man!