When Harry Met Sally; My favorite movie
There is something magical about the movie, When Harry Met Sally. It's not the adorable Meg Ryan and the endearing Billy Crystal. While I truly enjoy their acting and the movies they have done, they only add to the magic of this film.
From the very beginning of the movie, with Billy Crystal's Harry; the cynical, arrogant, sexually driven young man and Meg Ryan's sweet, naive, sensible Sally, you are drawn into their small world and carried through the movie with laughter, tears and a type of nostalgia that is difficult to explain. I could relate to Sally and her need to view everyone she met as a good person. Wanting to believe that people could change if only exposed to liberal points of view. Even as Harry was talking about banging anything with a skirt, Sally would look at him as a mother would her child, waiting for them to grow up but not to lose their sense of bewilderment. Harry on the other hand, was attracted to Sally because of her naivete and soft edges. He loved to ruffle her feathers and it blew him away that she didn't find him attractive in a sexual way when they first met. Ironically, their paths kept crossing over the years and coincidence began a treasured friendship between the two.
In my own world, I had more male friends than female. I truly don't know if they looked at me as someone they wanted to bang. My view of my relationship with them was like Sally's, I cared for them because they were my friends. I have often found men to be easier to befriend because they love to hear gossip but don't spread it. They will listen and not question or try to give me their opinion (until of course, we knew each other for years). I enjoyed the humor of men and the telling of dirty jokes and listening to their escapades with the women they encountered. I saw Sally becoming involved with Harry's life in that way. Then, it happened. The spark. The moment that they looked at each other and realized that their friendship had moved beyond the buddy system and it totally knocked them off guard.
Fear keeps Harry from committing to Sally and he almost loses her as a friend as well because of it. Sally had a strength that I have never possessed. She was able to completely close herself off from Harry because she knew she deserved it all. She wasn't going to settle for any less than his total commitment. I admired her character for this. In the end, he realizes that he can't live without her and finds her in a crowded dance and professes his love for her. A happy ending. *Sigh* Is there truly such a thing? I want to believe so.
My life partner, as I call him (or for this hub, I wil call him L), and I began in a similar way. I happened to have had my profile up on a dating web site because my heart had been broken and I needed reassurance that I still "had" it. This gangsta wanna be character, with a straw hat, multiple piercings and bad grammar wrote me a note. My first reaction was, "Doesn't he realize I'm a teacher?", and I wondered why this punk was writing to me. He was also 7 years younger than me and I even asked if he was one of my old students! He said he wondered if I knew one of his sisters and then asked me out to pizza hut. I politely said I'd pass and wondered why he even contacted me.
A month passed and I still had my post up. A nice looking man, in a baseball cap and a huge bright smile wrote, "Don't give up, your knight in shining armor hasn't found you yet." I assumed he wrote that because I had kept my profile on for so long. I wrote back and thanked him for the sweet message and explained that I wasn't really interested in dating anyone, as my heart was healing but I didn't mind talking with people because it gave me confidence. He mentioned that he lived near me and didn't want to date either; just was looking for someone to hang out with to eat or go to the movies with. Since my kids were gone every other weekend and it got pretty lonely going out by myself, I took him up on his offer. I also mentioned that he seemed familiar and asked if we had spoken before. He sent me the gangsta wanna be picture and I realized that he was the person I had turned down a month before! I laughed and told him that his picture from before had scared me and that I was happy that he posted a new and cleaner image picture.
Before we met, he kept telling me he was embarrassed about the way he looked. I am quite a hefty girl and I was worried about being judged for that. While I was only going to go out with him as a new friend, I was afraid that he would not want to hang with me when he saw me. I was surprised to hear him describe himself as a big ball of yarn; short, fat and bald. I kept telling him that his looks didn't matter to me and then I did what no woman ever does.....I told him how much I weighed to make him feel better.
We met at a Fazoli's and when he walked in the door, with that big smile and a thumbs up, I stood with my mouth open. He wasn't 5 feet as he stated, he wasn't fat and he wasn't bald (I should have realized that not many Mexican men are bald)! We sat and ate and all I could say was, "I can't believe you know how much I weigh."
Apparently, my weight didn't bother him and we hung out together for a couple months until one night, we were watching You've Got Mail together at my house and I was a bit tired. He suggested I lay my head on his lap on the pillow he had placed there. Now mind you, in two months we never held hands, kissed, hugged; nothing. I thought nothing of it but when I layed my head down, those familiar butterflies hatched in my stomach and that feeling of being on a roller coaster set in. I noticed he was a bit nervous as well. We finished the movie, he went home and for some reason, we didn't talk all week. The following week, when my kids were gone, we decided to see a movie. Things felt different. I realized that I had feelings for L that went beyond friendship. He was the most unlikely person for me to fall for...we hadn't planned it nor did we truly want that in the beginning. After the movie, we stood in the snow talking before we got into the car. We looked at each other and at the same time declared that something seemed different.
It's been a year and a half since we first met and I am truly in love with my best friend. We aren't speaking of marriage right now as we both have quite a bit of baggage from past relationships we need to work out. However, like the movie, When Harry Met Sally, we began as good friends and realized that our quest to find our soul mate ended with each other.
When I first watched this movie, I sat and dreamed about having a relationship where I could truly like my partner. Accept his faults and visa versa. How a strong friendship would grow into a deep love and partnership. Who would have guessed that I would be living that dream out in my late forties? It's always an adventure and each day I love him more.
