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I cant remember if I've written about my friend Lauren and our special relationship. Even if I have, oh well, I'll write about it again. So deal.

Lauren was raised solely by her mother. Her father was absent through her childhood through no fault of his own. He was a police officer who was shot and killed in the line of duty a month before she was born. It is a sad story, though Lauren never really seems too distraught, probably because she never met the man and has only had stories. I guess its hard to miss someone you’ve never met.

Anyway, Lauren and her mom were alone in their home until Lauren was in high school when her mother remarried. But by the time you’re in high school, childhood is well and truly over. I have often commented to Lauren that she didn’t have much in the way of a childhood. The frolicking and general carefreeness and trouble making that marked my childhood and the childhoods of almost everyone I know were not a part of hers.

And so, part of our relationship has been a gentle nudging on my part towards things of folly. I have discovered that there were gaping holes in her popular culture education, and so I lightly took it on myself to introduce her to what I consider the classics. Here is a partial list of the movies I have shown her that she had never seen in 23 years of life.

-A lion in Winter
-The adventures of Robin Hood (the one with Errol Flynn)
-Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure
-Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey
-The Sting
-Kind Hearts and Coronets
-This is Spinal Tap
-Maverick
-White Christmas
-The Sound of Music
-A Room with a View
-Ghostbusters

Some of those may be considered a bit off-center, but c’mon White Christmas! The Sound of Music! Ghostbusters! Man, these are the movies of my youth. Many is a time that either my father, my mother, or myself will randomly quote either Bill or Ted and rest assured that the audience will absolutely follow the reference.

I’m not sure why I thought to share my education of Lauren, maybe its because I just got back from our weekly lesson (tonights screening: A Lion In Winter*). People keep recommending movies that I should show her, and unless I’ve shown it to her or it’s an animated Disney flick, chances are she hasn’t seen it. So feel free to offer movies to share with her, I do currently have a list, but am always looking for other favorites that she has never been exposed to.


*She was astonished at the wit and veracity of the dialogue of the film. Katherine Hepburn up against Peter O’Toole is truly a sight. Plus some of those lines are just written for those two. Par example:

Henry II: My God! I’m alive, king, and fifty all at once.

Eleanor: Of course he has a knife, he always has a knife, we all have knives! It's 1183 and we're barbarians!