MadMup.com

It’s generally difficult for me to come up with “Top Five” lists on my own. If given a list of things, I can put them in order, but I can’t pick from, say, a vast field of movies and pick my favorite five. My default answer to “What’s your favorite movie?” is Batman (the Tim Burton one), most likely because I’ve seen it more than any other movie (and because, well, it’s awesome). But rounding out the rest of the list is difficult. Ghost Busters, Garden State, Unforgiven — how do you rank things so vastly different?

So I tend to speak in nonspecifics – “This movie’s in my top three,” “that song’s in my current top ten” – that kind of thing.

This movie’s definitely in my top three: Grosse Pointe Blank. John Cusack movies are in their own category (reference: Better Off Dead), as he’s got this certain character that he does/is that’s infinitely cooler than any other movie characters out there. I’ve heard it explained this way: Girls want to be with him, guys want to be him. I’ve heard rumors he’s not so cool in real life, but let’s stick with Martin Blank, Lane Meyer, and Lloyd Dobler here, shall we?

(There might be spoilers ahead, I don’t know. You’ve been sorta-warned.)

In Grosse Pointe Blank Cusack plays Martin Blank, a hit man who goes to his 10-year high school reunion. He’s in town to do a job, but he’s also wrestling with seeing the girl he left on Prom Night ten years ago without so much as a “by your leave.” On top of that he’s got competing hitmen trying to kill him and some government guys after him, too. He’s been kind of down lately and has been kind of seeing a shrink, a guy who really doesn’t want to talk to him because he’s afraid of Martin.

Debi (the girl) finds out he’s a hitman after stumbling across him over a recently deceased “bad guy,” and any sort of “we might be okay even after the ten year absence” thing is quickly destroyed. But then Martin goes on to save her father’s life and the end of the movie sees them heading off into the sunset together. Too pat? Maybe. Unbelievable? Sure. Hoped for? You bet.

I love the movie for many reasons. Cusack, of course, and the traditional Cusack snappy dialogue. The humor. The juxtapositions. The music.

But it hit me recently what I liked most about it: the redemption. Here’s this guy who kills people for money. He loses his taste for it (not quite the same thing as “realizes it’s wrong,” but, hey) and wants to pick up where he left off with the girl he loved. Not a chance, she says. In fact, after she finds out what he does and she is storming out, he tries to call her back. She whips around and says very deliberately, “You don’t get to have me.” Translation: You messed up, and because you did, I’m forever out of your reach. It’s a powerful, sad moment. Of course, by the end of the movie things are different, but right then it’s big. She leaves and Martin lays on the bed, knowing he’s out, he’s done, he has no hope of ever being with her.

Then he does something heroic, saves the day… and gets another chance. I love that. Sure, we don’t know what happens after the movie ends (can we get a sequel already?!?) and he could go on to mess the whole thing up in normal, everyday ways that people mess up relationships, but he gets that second chance and to me that’s awesome.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to re-meet people I used to know “way back when.” They’ve been happy to see me, and it’s weird. I kind of feel like I’m getting that second chance myself. And I see how they’ve done since I last saw them (and some of them are doing really, really well) and it reminds me of the reunion – Martin’s going through this great crisis of life and he’s meeting happy mothers, succesful realtors, near-death experience survivors – all these other people, and it throws into contrast what he’s been doing the last ten years.

At one point during the reunion, he sits down at a table with a friend from high school who has her very young baby with her. She asks Martin to hold him while she gets something from her purse. Martin initially balks, but then holds the kid on the mother’s further insistence. There’s a good minute or two of Martin looking at this baby, and you sense he’s realizing he might want to settle down and have one of these himself (which would, of course, require him getting out of the killing people business).

The baby’s mother at one point asks Martin, “So, how’s your life?”

“In progress,” he responds. He’s right on the edge of big changes and he senses that things could maybe turn out right.

“In progress.” I like that. It’s going on and I’m doing stuff and who knows how it’ll end?

“In progress” indeed.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time at all you’ve probably noticed I don’t get very personal very often. I’ve taken an “editorial” approach here, using observances to make a point or to make a joke – what I like to call the “Dave Barry Approach.” While I think you can piece together an accurate picture of me from what I post, it is by no means a complete one. If you were to meet me, I don’t think you’d be surprised. I pretty much am in real life what I am here, all quirks and smart aleck comments.

But there’s plenty you don’t know about me, plenty I keep to myself.

That’s a function of two different forces, I think. First, I grew up in Wisconsin. There’s something about Wisconsin – and, really, the whole Midwest – that doesn’t encourage sharing. If you’ve ever heard Garrison Keillor talk about his fictional town of Lake Wobegon you know what I mean. There’s an encouragement to “soldier on” and be nice to each other without letting on about whatever turmoil rages beneath the surface. It’s fine to have strong feelings, just keep them to yourself.

The second force is good old-fashioned fear. I am all about honesty, but honesty is a double-edged sword. In the one direction, it cuts through all the nonsense and gives a solid base for any relationship. In the other direction, though, it lays a person bare, open to ridicule, attack, and disgust.

I want people to like me, as a general rule – even people I’ll never see again, like waiters or people at the register. I want them to look at me, assess me as nice, and continue thinking that after I’ve said something.

But as much as I want people to like me, I also want to be safe. Safety, in fact, can outweigh a hundred other things. While I might not worry that someone else is going to stab me (though I sometimes actually do worry this), I certainly worry that they won’t accept me for who I am. Think back to high school and that crush you had. Why didn’t you tell them? You were afraid they wouldn’t feel the same way about you and when they didn’t, it was going to hurt. Carry that to its logical conclusion, though: the only way to really feel safe is to not reach out at all. If you never reach out, you’ll never get hurt. I think the editorial voice I’ve adopted here is a safety zone of sorts. You might not like my cats, you might not like trips I take, you might not like a bunch of things, but if I haven’t revealed my inner self completely, there’s still a chance you could like me.

See, what I want is for you to think I’m worth the effort, worth getting past all the quirks and the failures. I want you to think I’m worthwhile, but I have no way to prove I am. (And, in fact, I have a whole pile of evidence that I’m not. I feel like anyone I think is really great and I’m interested in being friends with deserves to have better friends than me.) I think there should be some sort of “Friend Résumé” we could hand out: “Excuse me, hi. I think you’re really neat and I want to be friends with you. Here’s a list of my faults and failures, but this other list is of friends I’ve had who found the experience to be worth the effort. You’ll see I’ve included a few phone numbers – those are people who are willing to be references, so feel free to call them. Thank you for your time and I hope to hear back from you soon.”

Nobody wants to invest time in a bad friendship. How frustrating to keep working and working at something that ultimately comes to nothing. So often, though, it’s our faults that make the relationship stronger. What’s the best way to show love, by liking someone’s qualities that are likable? Nope, it’s by liking them in spite of their failings. 1 Corinthians 13:5 says love “does not seek its own.” 1 Peter 4:8 says “love covers a multitude of sins.” Think about the best friend you’ve ever had. Were things always perfect? Of course not. How’d you get past those times and remain friends? “Love covers a multitude of sins,” is how. One of the best friends I have right now I’ve known for over twenty years. Our Junior year in high school we were sitting at a lunch table and he was making fun of me for something and I threw an orange at him, hit him right below the eye. We got past that and a hundred other rough patches and here we are, still friends – in fact, I’d say we were better friends for it.

In the beginning stages of friendship, though, it’s difficult to know what to do. A series of faults right at the outset can strangle off what might have been a fantastic friendship given time, but isn’t it important to be honest from the get-go? How honest is too honest?

I think that as I get older, I’m coming to the conclusion that I want people to like me for who I am, not who I can present myself as. I still feel the same way I did in high school, not wanting to be hurt, but I think it’s more important that the other person not be hurt. “I think you’re really great and I want to be friends with you, but I want to let you know up front what you’re dealing with so you have the chance to back out now before you get stuck with it all down the road.”

I want to be worthwhile, but I guess that’s really up to you. All I can do is be who I am. And, just like Dave Barry’s writing, you’ll either like that or you won’t.