Why All Women Love the Notebook!

It astounds me that no matter who you meet, their age, economic background, political leanings or any other dynamic that you can think of, all women seem to be universal in their love for the movie, The Notebook.  I spent a little time to try to understand this phenomenon.  I think that if I can understand this fascination then, perhaps, I will be on my way to finally understanding the fairer sex.  It’s the classic story, rich city girl Alli Hamilton meets poor country boy Noah Calhoun and they fall in love, Noah promises to build her a house, and even though they are separated by unforeseen circumstances for many years and trials and tribulations.  Even though Alli blows Noah off he still carries a torch for her through his stint in world war II.  Alli moves on to find another guy to marry who her parents like much more than Noah.  He still carries his love for Alli even though every normal person would have long forgotten her and her foolish ways. It just seems that all women secretly long to be so important to someone else that they build a house for them.  As our two lovers come back together, we see them pick up where they left off and realize that her mother schemed to keep them apart for all of those years.  They decide to stay together and have a happy life, and that is the story.  As Alli is in declining health, Noah reads the story of their life to them out of a Notebook, in the end dying together before she forgets everything all together.

What a Woman Sees In the Notebook

Noah

When a woman watches the movie, they seem to be very selective about what they see.  It seems almost without exception they see a man in love with a woman, who carries a torch for her even though she has apparently forgotten all about him and moved on to some rich guy.  They also see a guy who spends all of his money and time rebuilding a house which to them is a symbol of his everlasting love.  Women also see a man who is carrying around in his heart a quiet but sure flame for his true love, I mean why else would he build  her a studio in his house?  It is so lovely!   At the end of her life, he loves her so much that he comes back to spend every day with her at the nursing home, even though  she doesn’t remember it, and in the end, the last time that she remembers him, they hold hands and pass away together.  How sweet, they think, he really loved her and if only I could experience that kind of commitment from a man I would be happy.   It must be a universal theme, because so many women say that this is their favorite movie.  I don’t see it on many lists of favorite movies for guys, though. Noah  Calhoun represents their ideal man, which no man can possibly live up to.

What a Man Sees when he watches the Notebook

The perception of a man is quite different than his female counter part.  First of all

Alli

they look at a man who was totally mistreated by this woman, and still he was so whipped that he spent all of his time, going off the deep end, building a house for her, and only sleeping with women that reminded him of her.  When she finally does come back, he welcomes her with open arms, even though she has been out fooling around with rich guys and not thinking about him at all, or at least very little.  You wouldn’t be marrying someone else if you were still in love.  This guy can’t accept the truth or take a hint.  He pines away for her like a fool.  Even in the end, he can’t even die when he wants to, he has to check out of this life on her schedule.  Totally, and completely whipped.  Who would want to live like that?  The Notebook totally disregards the male perspective and perpetrates this female dream, that if a man truely loves you, you can treat him like crap and he’ll still build a house for you.  The real problem with this is that when they are faced with a real relationship, they measure every guy compared to the dude in the Notebook.  It is not realistic and those guys do not exist, and the sooner you understand the difference between reality and the movies the happier we all will be.

Birds Have Meaning In The Notebook

From the opening scenes to the end of the story there is a constant present of birds throughout the movie.  Birds have traditionally been seen as vehicles of messaging or of foreshadowing of things to come.  These birds represent the story of Noah and Alli from the start to the end of the movie, at one time they even say, “I’m a bird.”,  and Noah replies, “If your a bird, I’m a bird too.”  I think that the overall representation is that the birds throughout the movie show the perceived timelessness of their love.  All of this just contributes to the myth that for every heartbroken Alli Hamilton out there, they are dreaming of finding their own Noah Calhoun to make all of their inner dreams come true.

OK I’m A Freakin’ Bird!  Now Get Off My Back! Nag, Nag, Nag

Don't Smoke!

Smoking Sticks Set Us Free

As a forty something adult, I have been fortunate enough to have experienced a different type of parenting when I was a kid.  When it came to punishment, the prevailing theory was that if you screwed up you were going to get spanked, and if you screwed up really bad you were probably going to get the belt.  Now a days, parents would be accused of being poor parents if they treated their kids that way.  Back then you would be considered a bad parent if you didn’t treat your kid that way. My first ten years of life were spent in fear of the belt, and I went to great lengths to make sure I never got caught doing anything stupid enough to get the belt, but I was limited by my own intellect so on occasion, I had to face the belt.  A little more information about the belt, it was the final punishment and it was always administered by my father, both extremely scary things for a kid to face.  Made me really want to not screw up too badly.  I remember hearing Bill Cosby talk about how his father used to say, “The belt will wail tonight!” whenever they were in trouble, I never liked the way my Dad laughed when he heard that line

Like many independence movements, our beating the belt for good, wasn’t an elaborate plan, it was the result of the circumstances of our life.  I have to give credit to the real “brains” behind the victory, my brother Jamie.  He was the real Gandhi of this situation, my role was simply being smart enough to follow his lead, and beat the belt.

It all happened on a beautiful summer day, Jamie, Mike Martin, Joel Wortman and myself were enjoying the day, as any 9 or 10 year old could.  Growing up in Greenville, Maine there were not a lot of interesting things to do, on this particular day, we went to some kind of local “fair” gathering.  In Greenville, the gathering of more than 20 people for a craft display, or gaming of any kind seemed to qualify as a “fair” and what this fair was all about I can’t remember, but we bought or were given balloons on sticks.  I am hoping that in hindsight we weren’t so lame as to pay money for a balloon on a stick, but I wouldn’t put it past us, I mean it was the 70′s, there wasn’t an internet, there wasn’t even cable, we had to make our own fun, and on this day the fun consisted of balloons on sticks.  In Greenville, we couldn’t even get balloons on string, with helium in them, they would at least make our voices sound funny for about five minutes or so.  But after that we only would have had string left, and what trouble could string cause, balloons on sticks led to it’s own, as you will see.

A Balloon On A Stick

Balloons you see are very breakable and once we had broken all of our balloons, we were left with just sticks.  These sticks were about two feet long, about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and hollow in the middle.  We commenced doing the types of things we would do, deciding the sticks might be useful after all, we started hitting each other with them, which turned into a massive four way duel, using our former balloon holders as weapons we proceeded to use our fake cutlasses on each other until slowly but surely our “blades” were broken to small pieces.  All of the fun was apparently over.  It was at this time that an older kid from our neighborhood, who had been watching our fight, came over and informed us that our sticks were still quite valuable.  We looked at him with the blank eyes of a teddy bear, not understanding what he could mean.  A side note at this point which will become clearer as the story concludes, we weren’t overly bright children.  Our newly found mentor informed us that we could in fact smoke the sticks because they were hollow.  We thought this was a grand idea, and I refer to my previous statement about our intellect to explain why.   We informed him that we were well aware of this fact, and were on our way to enjoy a good smoke, and talking to him was just delaying our enjoyment.

Quickly a plan was devised by our brain trust, and I realize that we were short on the first half of that statement.  We had at least a thousand places outside where we could have gone and performed our sin, but not us, we chose to smoke them inside our house in our own room!  Smart we were not.   After using some distracting techniques to swipe some matches from the kitchen, we gathered around the window in our room and proceeded to light and smoke the broken sticks we had accumulated.  Again I stress we were not very intelligent children, even though we were blowing the smoke out the window, the wind current was sending a gentle waft of smoke throughout the house.  It was not long before the smoke aroused our father to our activities.

We heard him coming and quickly extinguished and dumped the evidence, out the window and sat as innocently as we could waiting for the inevitable inquisition.

Don't Smoke Sticks!

“What are you up to?”  My father shouted.  There were many answers we could give at this point, the truth, which would carry it’s own perils, smoking was an almost automatic belt offense, so to get around the belt, we had to come up with a lie.  What lie, something believable, something slick, something that would impress our friends.  You could almost see our minds working a mile a minute.  It was Jamie who spoke first, looking at the window sill, he saw a few leaves in the eaves.  Which prompted him to blurt out our answer, and once he was on the record I was bound to back it up.

“We were just burning leaves.”  Jamie said as I nodded in approval.  Feeling that perhaps our rouse had saved us from the belt.  In our minds it made sense, but in an adults mind, I am sure he was thinking,  ”I have raised two morons, who are liable to burn down the house when I am not watching them.  What have I done?” We had taken a sure belt offense and turned it into a federal indictment on our collective intellect.  Clearly we needed to be taught a lesson.  The  belt would be educating this afternoon, and with our friends there too!  It is one thing to cry and carry on and such, but our young masculinity wouldn’t allow it.  We walked the green mile toward our punishment as stoically as we could.  Perhaps it was this false bravado that created the idea in Jamie’s mind, or maybe it was just luck, but somehow through fate or coincidence a plan of genius was hatched.

As we faced our inevitable punishment, my brother volunteered to go first, and I was all for that, hoping for some divine intervention before my turn came.  I watched as the belt hit it’s mark, I winced in sympathy, but the next sound I heard was as shocking as cold water being poured on someone deep in slumber. It was not a cry or a whimper, but a giggle.  That giggle came from my brother and it grew into an outright laugh.  Our father’s face registered a significant bewilderment, as he let another feeble blow go, more laughter ensued.  Jamie was dropped like he had leprosy, and he quickly moved on to me.  Now I am no rocket scientist, as you can already tell from the  story so far, but I know a winning hand when I see one.  I mimicked what my brother had done and followed suit. I laughed out loud.  The funny thing was that I wasn’t faking it, hiding real pain, it didn’t hurt at all.  Maybe it was a lack of brain cells, but I believe we had seen through the facade, and that punishment was more mental than physical.  I was dropped like a hot potato and we both scurried out of the room with our pride  completely in our hands.  It was the last time we ever faced the belt in our childhood.  Our parents had to resort to more cerebral punishments, our friends were duly impressed with our victory.  So much so that all involved still remember this event thirty years later.  I wondered how long we had lived needlessly in fear of the belt, and if we had figured it out earlier we would have saved ourselves a lot of imagined pain. I guess it falls under the category of better late than never.

Today, kids don’t have to worry about this type of punishment and are relegated to endure endless time outs and consequences from decisions.  Some day I think that everyone sees through the lie of punishment and that the real pain and learning takes place in our own mind.  I am sure that most people were a lot smarter than we were and beat the belt long before we did.

Rules That All Ignore

Nobody ever listens

When I was teaching high school, after about ten years or so, I thought that I was a pretty intelligent person.  I had seen a lot of kids come and go and continually I saw them make the same mistakes with their lives.   I wanted to tell all of the new students that were coming my way how to avoid all of the pitfalls that ensnared so many of their predecessors, but if you try to tell any kid anything, they have a severe case of selective hearing.  If you are over 25 there is no way that you could ever know anything that would relate to their life in any way.  It doesn’t matter what you are trying to teach them.  They will not listen when you tell them your own experiences.

The only thing you can do is condense everything you want them to know into small spoon sized portions that they will remember without even realizing it.  Once the thought is in their head, there is not much they can do about it.  They can ignore it, but the rules are always there, or at least I thought so.  It has been years since I had even thought about the three rules, but was reminded recently about how I told them to my advisee group when they were freshmen in high school, and probably to every class I ever taught.  They were worth telling then and worth listening to now.  At least I think so, and this is my blog so…………….there you go!

Rule number one  -  Always Wear You’re Seat Belt

rule number 2

The reason for this rule was self explanatory to me, I had seen several lives cut tragically short because of car accidents.  Seeing a life end so prematurely and to possibly be preventable was a no brainer to me.  Having experienced that, I never wanted to have that experience because of one of those kids I was talking to.  Wearing a seat belt is the law and it makes sense.  I know that you can still be critically injured in a car accident even when you wear all safety equipment, but if wearing a seat belt can prevent you from dying and all of the suffering that comes along with it, then why wouldn’t you?  So wear your seat belt, it’s the law and someone out there cares about you enough.

Rule number two- Don’t Drink or Do Drugs

Such an adult thing to say to a kid, but one that I always wanted to at least say.  As adults most of us have either directly experienced the affects of drugs and/or alcohol either through direct practice or indirect observation.  There is one fact

Ozzy wishes he hadn't

that I could never get over, and that was that I never heard any good reason to do either of these things.  How many lives have been destroyed because of these vices.  Alcohol has been marketed to the young through the media for decades, and is always portrayed as bringing a good time with it, when in truth you are ingesting small amounts of poison into your body willingly to change your perception of reality.  The sad part is that no matter how much you drink or how many drugs you do, they won’t improve your reality.   Nobody says when they are a kid, “Gee, I want to be an alcoholic or a drug addict when I grow up.”   , still we have so many.  I do not judge these people, because we are all just one or two different decisions away from someone else’s  problems.  I can see that using these substances inevitably leads to misery and it all can be avoided by following rule number two, I also know that I would have more of a chance of reversing the law of gravity than to have this advice be listened to, much less followed.

Rule number three- Don’t Have Sex Until You Are Married

Nobody listens to this!

Talk about unrealistic.  I had seen how so many lives had been changed by the unexpected pregnancy that resulted from unsafe premarital sex.  In hind sight, it would have been more productive to say, don’t have unsafe sex.  But I was idealistic at the time, I have become more of a realist over time.  I would still encourage waiting to have sex though.  Again, our kids are bombarded with messages at younger and younger ages that sexuality should be exploited.  The factor I think nobody ever talks about is that sex is more than a physical act it is an emotional one as well.  And most often, almost without exception, these emotions can overwhelm you if you are not ready for them.  Not to mention the unplanned pregnancy that could result.  Once you have made the decision to have sex, you have to be ready to pay the consequences.  They may be immediate or they may come back to you twenty years later.  Whatever the case, you have to be ready to accept that responsibility, because it is a part of the deal.  I also in retrospect feel very hypocritical about saying this, because I didn’t practice it when I was young, but I guess because of this I also am the voice of experience.

 Conclusion

As I have gotten older and moved away from teaching and been able to look at things from a distance, I know that as people we try to develop rules to protect ourselves from being hurt.  Unfortunately, life is full of random acts that you will never be able to avoid no matter how many rules you make.  Life is going to happen and sometimes uncomfortable stuff will happen to you.  If you survive all of that random crap, accidents, sickness and failed relationships, and you can recognize them for what they are, just things that happen in life, you can still enjoy the hell out of what is left.