05.21.08
The age of a fangirl
This past March, on Sunday morning at Norwescon, as we were packing up to check out of our room, I saw the trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
I’d been deliberately avoiding the trailer for this movie. Despite how often I ran across it posted on blogs and forums, despite how excited friends were getting about it, I refused to watch it. I hadn’t been to any movies at which the trailer was screened. I had not wanted to see this trailer, had not wanted to get a (very carefully shaped) preview of the film. But without warning, there it was on Sunday morning on the convention’s in-house channel, and despite my prior avoidance, I couldn’t help watching it.
As the first shadowed scenes played, one by one, with the hint of music from past films playing under them, I found a lump rising in my throat. As Indy’s hat landed on the ground, I found my eyes filling with tears. And by the time the entire thing had run its course, with music and motifs and characters that were intimately familiar to me and yet put in new settings, I was openly weeping.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks and said to my husband, half-angrily and half-wistfully, “Dammit, I am supposed to be too old for this kind of fangirl nonsense.”
Gently, and with great understanding, he replied, “But you’re not.”