{"id":4235,"date":"2010-11-29T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2010\/11\/how-spies-like-us-became-an-annual-december-ritual.html"},"modified":"2010-11-29T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T07:00:00","slug":"how-spies-like-us-became-an-annual-december-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2010\/11\/how-spies-like-us-became-an-annual-december-ritual.html","title":{"rendered":"How Spies Like Us became an annual December ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
<\/a><\/div>\n

Funny how sometimes we just do things because they evoke some memory of the past.\u00a0 My own experience is that if you try to reproduce a splendid time you had on vacation, or a cruise, or a concert, or anything, it isn\u2019t so easy to do.\u00a0 Go back in a couple years and you might have fun, but you\u2019ll probably never reproduce the \u2018magic\u2019 of that first time you went here or did that there.\u00a0 Yet there are\u00a0some things I find myself doing every year simply because they\u2019re part of my collective memories.\u00a0 Many of them have developed since I was married, and others since we\u2019ve had kids.\u00a0 Some of them have been adjusted to the new demands on time that jobs and growing kids\u00a0can place upon our schedules.\u00a0 But some of them manage to find their way on my yearly calendar, if for no other reason than I\u2019ve always done it.<\/p>\n

Take my annual viewing of the 1985 comedy Spies Like Us<\/em>.\u00a0 There\u2019s not really anything special about the movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s OK.\u00a0 Some of its humor is there, some of it more or less has gone the way of parachute pants.\u00a0 Truth be told, I don\u2019t particularly like the movie that much.\u00a0 The first and only parring of Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd seemed as much miss as hit.\u00a0 Yet since the advent of DVDs and its full screen release, I bought it and have watched it every year in the first week of December.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Because I first saw it in the first week of December in 1985, toward the end of my freshman autumn quarter at Ohio State.\u00a0 School wasn\u2019t out yet, but a few friends who lived on campus began filtering back home on weekends.\u00a0 I stayed at home and commuted to a local branch of OSU for the first two years, so I was already milling about, waiting for my former classmates to return with their stories of college life.\u00a0 The first week of exams was over and since he was done, one of my best friends from childhood, named Kelly, came back that weekend.\u00a0\u00a0As usual, I had exams until the last day of the quarter.\u00a0 Nevertheless, he was home, our first foray into college life was coming to it seasonal conclusion, and I was anxious to do something with my old buddy.<\/p>\n

That Friday night, after stopping by the home of our karate instructor Dale Beam (having moved to Columbus, Kelly had stopped his lessons, but I was still involved), we went to nearby Marion, Ohio to see a movie in the Southland Mall movie theatre.\u00a0 The movie we picked was Spies Like Us<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Apart from remembering the scene in which Bob Hope makes a cameo, and otherwise thinking it was pretty stupid, I don\u2019t remember much of the movie.\u00a0 Nor do I remember much from the rest of the evening.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember what we said at the Beam\u2019s home, nor do I remember anything else.\u00a0 Yet for some reason, I\u2019ve always made sure I watch Spies Like Us<\/em>\u00a0sometime around the first of December.\u00a0 I lift a cold one, kick back, and let the general flavor of that Reagan era, late Cold War comedy lift me up and take me back to pleasant memories.\u00a0 Even if I can\u2019t remember what they were, something inside me says they were happy times.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s because I\u2019m not trying to reproduce an entire event, or trip, or vacation,\u00a0the annual ritual works.\u00a0 There are other things I remember from that Christmas breaks way back when.\u00a0 There are other memories, particularly from fall and winter, Christmas and December, that flood my mind at different times and in different circumstances.\u00a0 There are other movies, various songs, smells, weather, sunsets, games and school specials that may ring a bell.\u00a0 But for some odd reason, watching a movie I don\u2019t particularly care for at a given time each year brings back a flood of memories and a chance to remember life from a simpler time. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s not really a spiritual application here, though I\u2019m sure more clever writers could get one out of it.\u00a0 Nor is there a link to some story in the news or some crisis in the Middle East, or an attempt to say how ignorant we were of areas like Pakistan in 1985.\u00a0 It\u2019s just something I was thinking about while looking through our DVD case to find the movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s what makes us people, I suppose,\u00a0and I\u2019ll bet I\u2019m not the only one who has those strange, quirky things that when done every so often, bring back memories of people gone on their own ways, times long past, and a hint of yearning for a time that nostalgia alone can satisfy.\u00a0 So here\u2019s to us Kelly, hope life is treating you well, wherever you are.\u00a0 I\u2019ll think of all those times we had in a few evenings when I sit down and watch this stupid comedy from another world, and another time, all those years ago.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Funny how sometimes we just do things because they evoke some memory of the past.\u00a0 My own experience is that if you try to reproduce a splendid time you had on vacation, or a cruise, or a concert, or anything, it isn\u2019t so easy to do.\u00a0 Go back in a couple years and you might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Spies Like Us became an annual December ritual<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Funny how sometimes we just do things because they evoke some memory of the past.  My own experience is that if you try to reproduce a splendid time\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" 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