Have you ever been so tired you couldn’t think straight? That was me last week as I made the final push to put my house on the market. I hated to miss writing my weekly Did You Know? but it couldn’t be helped. My brain just wouldn’t cooperate. I couldn’t think of anything other than the job I was doing and what needed to be done next.
When the fog finally cleared and I could think again, I tried to remember the last time I’d been that tired. I had to go back a long way. All the way back to the summer I was sixteen and the month I spent with my aunt here in Tennessee.
Work, Work, and More Work
Growing up, Dad didn’t let the fact I was a girl deter him from teaching me traditional “boy” skills. And what he didn’t cover, his older half-sister did. Between the two, I learned to do just about everything you can think of—and some things you can’t. During my stay with her that summer, my aunt worked me hard from dawn to dusk and well after, putting those skills to good use. Few fun activities filled my schedule until a family friend realized the predicament (i.e., “work camp”) I was living in and decided to help. Wanting to give me a break and a bit of fun, he encouraged his son, Bill, to ask me out.
The Call
As usual, night had fallen but my work hadn’t ended. I kid you not, when Bill called, I was sitting on a stool in my aunt’s kitchen, polishing the silver. Talk about a Cinderella moment.
When he asked me to dinner and a movie, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. Though, truth be told, at that moment, I’d have agreed to go with anyone just to get out of the house.
The Date
I’d not met Bill before, but he turned out to be as wonderful as his father. Two years my senior, he was easy to talk to, and over dinner I learned more about him, including how he was working a summer job on an asphalt company’s paving crew, saving money to help pay his way through Vanderbilt. (His parents may have been wealthy, but Bill was far from your typical spoiled rich boy.)
After an enjoyable dinner, we drove to the theater. The movie didn’t start until nine, and we were half an hour early. We sat in the nearly empty theater talking until the lights went down. That’s when life began to imitate art, specifically the Everly Brother’s song, “Wake Up Little Susie.”
The Nap
Looking back, it isn’t too surprising that as soon as the movie started, Bill and I fell asleep. Thankfully, though, unlike the couple in the song, we were in an actual theater rather than a drive-in, so an usher woke us when the movie ended. When we realized what had happened, we couldn’t help but laugh. No excuses needed. No angry parents to appease. Just one missed movie. And that was no great loss, as I discovered nearly a decade later when I caught it on TV. In this case, the song’s lyrics were dead-on: The movie wasn’t so hot, it didn’t have much of a plot.
Life and Art
As a writer, many of my story ideas come from real life. Art imitating life. Falling asleep in the movie theater that night was my personal experience of life imitating art. It’s also one of my favorite (and funniest) memories.
Have you had a life-imitating-art experience? If so, I’d love to hear about it.