Growing Up At The Movies

Age 7: Wild cat attacks Walter Pidgeon
in Disney’s Big Red.
Runaway boy shoots cat in mid-air,
saving Walt.

Age 11: Chinese mob tears Mako to pieces
in The Sand Pebbles.
Dad doesn’t notice,
but I pull my ball cap over my eyes.
(Steve McQueen delivers
the coup de grace.)

Dustin Hoffman says “I’m
gettin' the goddamn hell out of here”
in The Graduate.
Dad winces at that,
wishes he hadn’t brought me.

Age 12: All the other kids are going to see
Bonnie and Clyde.
My mother won’t let me.
In Like Flint with James Coburn
and all those babes
just slips under her radar.

Age 13: I return home awestruck
on a Friday night
from 2001: A Space Odyssey,
need calming down
before I can go to sleep.

Age 14: In mid-sentence,
Strother Martin gets blown off his mule
in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
It’s a punch in the belly,
but I’m okay.

Age 17: After waiting a full year
to be old enough for
A Clockwork Orange,
my friend and I walk out afterwards
feigning boredom.

Age 18: Graphic beheading, blood
Splashing the camera,
In Papillon.
After Gregory Sierra gets impaled in the jungle,
I decide not to see this one again,
And never do.

Age 21: The Lollipop Girls
in Hard Candy.
(Hard times have forced our local
movie-house to go porno.)
Ah, but I’ve been drinking
before going in. No hard-on.

Age 47: Sweet Home Alabama,
(an afternoon matinee.)
I realize with an inward sigh,
that my paunchy, balding self
is now too old to be
Reese Witherspoon’s guy.