It makes me just feel like crying, baby, ’cause baby, something beautiful’s dying.

“There’s a new Tim Hortons commercial that’s going to make you cry,” my husband called from the living room.  “I’ve already seen it AND cried this morning.”  I replied.  Oh, Tim Hortons and their tear-jerking commercials.  Years after it first aired, my husband can still say, stiffly, “I come watch” and I will tear up. 

But it’s not just Tim Hortons’ commercials.  I’m an emotional wreck these days.  In other words, I should not have, in hindsight, spent the afternoon of Jake’s sixth birthday watching videos of him and his brother from when they were small.  What was I thinking?  I wasn’t, clearly.  I’m suffering from some kind of pre-empty-nest syndrome.  Last night there was a barbeque at the school and when a friend asked if I was going, I replied that no, I was just going to stay home and be sad.

What a pill.  Fortunately, Top Gun was on TV and, like a moth to a flame, I found myself watching it.  It’s not even a guilty pleasure.  It’s just a pleasure.  They don’t make movies like that anymore.  I have been watching it for twenty-five years and it just never gets old.  “The plaque for the alternates is down the hall in the ladies’ room.”  STILL FUNNY.  It makes me want to go visit a bar near an air force base just to see if the pickup lines “I’m a pilot.  Actually, a naval aviator.” would still be used.  Of course, I’m not sure I fit the demographic that those delivering the pickup lines would be looking for, but one could hope.  Never have I been serenaded by a group of naval aviators singing “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling” but it could totally happen. 

There has always been much talk about the glossy, oiled-up, homoerotic volleyball scene (“Playing…playing with the boys!”) and every time I see that movie I rewind that scene at least three times.  Iceman…because that’s the way he flies, ice cold with no mistakes.  Whew!  I saw that movie in my formative years and I swear it set me up for a lifelong enjoyment of the bad boy/asshole.  No soft and sensitive guy for me, it seems, which is probably a good thing.  I think I have enough softness and sensitivity to go around.  Of course, after watching the movie I felt like pounding away on my piano and yelling to my husband “Hey you big stud!  Take me to bed or lose me forever!”  So maybe I’m not totally soft and sensitive.

The first time I saw Top Gun it was in an ice-cold theatre on a hot summer night in Estevan, Saskatchewan.  Eleven-year-old me was fascinated by it.  I longed for a life of adventure, a life beyond my young and boring existence.  Now I’m thirty-six, with my happy and comfortable life that I love, my life which is largely devoid of adventure.  But when that opening music plays, I long to roll down the windows of the minivan and drive really fast down the highway.  The highway to the danger zone.