Sentimentality in Life and in Films

Sentimentality in Life and in Films ©

By Michael Casey

I’ve just watched Hope Floats on the telly, an old Sandra Bullock film it was nice and sentimental and had some nice comic moments in it. Meanwhile this morning my daughter had to go back and collect the keys she had lost while out with an artist friend the day before. Thankfully the security crew had found them, and yes we gave her merry hell last night, as we would have had to change the locks on our doors. So we let her waste 2 hours this morning on 2 buses there and 2 buses back till she retrieved her keys. You don’t get a chauffeur from mum if you make such a stupid mistake.  I told my daughter yesterday that we’d laugh about it in the future, and it would become a treasured memory. Once the screaming finished there would be laughter.

Today dawned and a new day and a new life was born. My wife’s  boss’s wife gave birth to their first child today. So the lost keys gave way to the joy of life. The key to life is babies and family after all. No doubt in future the baby may be baptised.  I mention this because Paul the Vicar was talking to me yesterday and he said the narrowboat trip was cancelled, and that once he cycled into the canal in Birmingham. I smiled as I said it must have been a form of baptism for him. He replied it was the filthiest water he had ever been in. I thought  he’d not met some of the Souls I’d worked with  over my life.

We can be sentimental after the event, at the time in real time things can be  murder. I know from bitter experience how  the Wall, not the one  when you run a Marathon but the one in Life can be very hard or high, but afterwards the Relief is so great. Then you can sit around and laugh as you have a  beer or just a coffee and biscuits and think just how did you survive. Our police, nurses,  teachers, bus drivers, mothers and fathers all have memories that take them to the brink of disaster, mainly other people’s that they have to sort out, our live with. Then afterwards in bed as they talk through the day with their lover or partner, they realise how lucky they were to survive that day. Then they can laugh, even laugh till tears fall.

At a funeral we can say, I hated that bitch, but I loved her, she was terrible to me, but I’ll miss her so much, she lent me that money to start my business but refused to accept payback. She said pay for my funeral instead, that’s why we have 6 black horses, and a hall for 1000 people and a gospel band here at her funeral. Mom I really miss you, all the things you made me do, like always polish my shoes, like always but always shave. And I was just a mechanic, until she pushed me, I ended up with a Limo hire business, and I diversified into the funeral business as I liked the cars so much. That’s  why she said pay for her  funeral.

So life is hard but we are very sentimental about the smallest of things. Nobody dare throw out that old chair, cos uncle always used to sit on it, and he used to tell such outrageous stories, did he really have 27 children? Or was he a liar? The old ladies used to blush when they saw him, and lots of  boys and girls used to come and stuff  ten pound notes in  his top pocket, he was their dad and granddad and great-grandad. He must have has 1000 pounds in that pocket alone. Then when  the priest and the  rabbi and  imam came by he always slipped money into their hands asking for prayers for his soul.

WE are sentimental when we remember old stories and they can hit us like a bullet just when we least expect it, I told a story about how my uncle was visiting from Boston USA and he hadn’t told mum that he was coming so he came in the back door with her sister Hanna and Joe her husband. Then mum turned around to see her brother who she had not seen in years, so she dropped a bowl full of crockery smashing them. Remember then we did not have a phone, mobiles had not been invented and a twice yearly letter was what all you got. A simple ordinary story but when I told my daughter the other day I started to cry. Why? Because I remember the Family Love, my mum, my uncles and aunt and my dad. I have a snapshot of it in my mind, like I’ve said before, even if I don’t have Total Recall I am a vacuum. So emotion gets sucked up too.

All of you reading this all over the world, and especially in Poland have these great great family memories, so you can think of you own family and friends and remember the laughter and anger then laughter again as family life unfolds, and sometime vomits like a baby on the Page of Life. So swop stories as you have a meal today and say Michael Casey encouraged you to think of the Sentimental Times, the Laughter Times. See who has the funniest  story, the stupidest story. 

And when you are in bed with your wife you can share other stories, just use your imagination. Then the children will ask mum and  day why were you laughing so much in bed last night. You can tell them as Clare Moore once did, when her dad asked her why she was laughing so much in her bed room. Its Michael Casey he’s making me laugh, she was reading  my stories.