d i n a n e . n e t 

Let me paint you a picture. I’m sitting on a brown leather sofa, kind of haphazardly. In front of me is an extremely large plasma television. In each of five directions, I can see very small cube speakers. They are producing no sound, but the television is producing a picture. A moving picture, in fact, showing some adorable Huskies.

When I saw the preview for Eight Below, I was in the movie theatre. I’m sure most people work the same way during the previews. A preview finishes, you look to the person you’re there with, and either make the excited “we’re going to go see that” nod or the less-than-impressed “not in a million years” finger-in-the-throat. Most of the time, Mike and I look at each other and make the same gesture. Sometimes, if I’m really excited, I fidget in my seat like a five-year-old. In this case, I was really excited. I love puppies! Mike… he made the gag gesture.

I was sad, but soon forgot about it. That is, until I was sitting in Best Buy waiting for Mike to pay for the TV.

Oh, right. We (and by “we” I really mean “Mike”) bought a new television. It’s too big. But it was on sale with several combined discounts and 3 years of no-interest financing. Why did I let him do this? I don’t know. I’m still not sure how he wore me down. But now we have a new TV, and watching 24 on it was pretty nice.

So there I am, sitting in a store, amongst people I do not know, watching the end of a movie I’ve never seen, hearing the audio from the next movie over (which I immediately recognized as Superman Returns, in case you were wondering). There were puppies. They were cute. Their owner-daddy found them. One of them was missing. Sadness. One of them wouldn’t get in the truck and ran off. Owner-daddy chased him. They found another puppy lying on the ground. Owner-daddy cried because, like me, he thought the puppy was dead. But then… you could see he was breathing… and his eyes opened… and owner-daddy picked him up and carried him home. And then…

and then…

and then…

I was bawling.