Good Thinking

So in my most brilliant move ever, I decided that:

1. I needed to watch Schindler's List because we had discussed it in a very belated VES section (why we had class a month after classes were supposed to end is another story entirely).
2. I would just watch the version they had in the library, which was on VHS, and
3. I thought I would watch it in the library, because I couldn't check it out (in another brilliant move, I managed to get my borrowing privileges suspended...actually, that might be more brilliant that what I'm describing now, but it's embarrassing enough that I'm not going to discuss it publicly - even if no one actually reads this blog).
   

It did not occur to me at the time, though you'd think it would be pretty obvious, that Schindler's List is not really library material. Needless to say, by about 30 seconds into the film I was heaving sobs (you think I'm exaggerating, but I promise I'm not - that first scene with the candles and the kaddish...oy). By an hour and a half into the film (the film is about a one hundred hours long [now I am exaggerating]), I had cried so much and so hard that my eyes were puffy and red, and I was sniffling so much that I had to go to the bathroom every 10 minutes for paper towels. The people sitting near the bathroom probably thought I was one of those rare cases of a boy with a urinary tract infection (and that this affected me very deeply, on an emotional level, or possibly that it coincided with a nasty case of pink eye).

Finally after the end of the film (and the height of my sobbing) the boy behind me, who is watching what appears to be a Korean comedy, asks me a question about the basic operation of one of the pieces of viewing equipment. So I tell him I have no idea how to do the thing with the thing. I can show him wear the eject button is, if he must know. At any rate, while saying this I am clearly unable to choke back my residual sobs (now a good five minutes after the movie ended), so he asks me if I'm alright (not in a compassionate way, though, but in a what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you way). And it is at that moment, ladies, gentlemen and readers of all genders, while muttering something about Schindler's List (using the video's box as evidence to bolster my weakly articulated point), that I realized it is a stupid, stupid idea to watch Holocaust films in public places. So that's the moral of the story (isn't it nice that this post has a moral).

Just say no!