A Scene from the Movie of My Life

I’ve long thought that movies have an advantage over real life partly because of the soundtracks—the perfect music to help you feel exactly what you’re supposed to feel in the cinematic moment—and partly because the director is able to draw your attention to what’s most important to notice.

But once, I did have an experience that seemed like a film scene.

A former college colleague of mine asked me one afternoon to play hooky from my office hours to help him with a pressing errand. Now, I taught for 31 years, and I never skipped out on even one office hour—except this once. So at the outset here we have a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off kind of setup. Cue the music.

This former friend (I’ll call him Bob) was remodeling his house and needed to move and store a large, round-topped solid oak table. He explained to me that the table was an heirloom, in his wife’s family for several generations, and his wife—who had an incendiary temper according to what Bob had said many, many times—had insisted that he rent a storage unit and move the table there until the construction work was finished so that there was not even the slightest danger that it could be damaged. Just moving the table to the side and covering it with pads was not sufficient; the table was far too precious to take such a risk. So it’s clear that in this movie frame, the director was careful to focus my attention on how important the table was and how temperamental Bob’s wife was. I think music from The Godfather would work here, or, abandoning subtlety, perhaps the theme from Jaws.

Bob was already unhappy about the cost of the storage unit, and to avoid any further moving cost, he had borrowed an old pickup truck from another colleague and of course had recruited me.

Our first job was to unscrew the table top from its pedestal base, a massive center column that branched out at the bottom into four side supports. Some ominous violin screeching would be appropriate at the moment we separated the top from its base.

We moved the base into the truck first and then carefully loaded the round top onto some cushioning blankets. I noticed that the truck bed was wide enough that the table would have fit even if we had not removed the base. But it was not wide enough for the top to lie flat. So we propped the top upright on its edge. When Bob went to shut the tailgate, it clanked but didn’t catch. [At this point the camera zooms in on a sizable rusty dent at the top of the tailgate near the latching mechanism.] Bob’s second try also failed, but the third time worked, and we were set to go. All safe and secure.

One thing I love about well-done movies is that when big plot points unfold, there’s both true surprise and also a sense of inevitability, a sense that of course that’s what happened; that’s what had to happen.

Bob started the truck and turned on the radio. I think Blood, Sweat, & Tears’ “Spinning Wheel” was playing. Bob drove slowly and cautiously and I was enjoying the music when I heard some metallic percussion that I didn’t remember in the song, followed by a loud thud behind us. I turned my head. [Closeup on Bob’s eyes in the rearview mirror, then a wide shot on what he sees: the tabletop rolling down the middle of the residential street behind us. You can even hear it rolling. The song on the radio switches to Creedence Clearwater Revival and the tempo triples: “Big wheel keep on turnin’. . . . Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ down the highway.”] I might be a little hazy on the lyrics. Anyway, I watched with bugged-out eyes and open mouth as the table rolled perfectly for about half a block. I couldn’t believe how far it got, and then it stalled and started to wobble-roll on its edge faster and faster in a tight circle the way a spun quarter or coaster or hula hoop will, until it whirred to a stop.

Bob backed up to get the news regarding his future. We saw that the entire edge of the table looked as if it had been sanded. It was rough and was lighter in color than the rest of the top. But otherwise the table was OK. Bob said, “I can fix this. I’ll sneak out nights to the storage unit and smooth and re-stain this and nobody,” meaning his wife, “will ever know what happened.”

I don’t know if Bob succeeded in his optimistic assessment or not. I was already an accomplice to the crime and didn’t want to be an accomplice to the coverup. So I never asked. Was his Mission Impossible?

Cue the music. Fade to black.