Up.

I did NOT cry.

However, let me go ahead and list a few things that, in a book/movie/whatever, can usually get at least a little lachrymal action from me:

1.  An old husband or wife left widowed alone in the house they built with their partner on love and memories

2.  A well-meaning fat kid

3.  An innocent, enthusiastic doggie

Throw in a WAY cool big vibrantly-colored bird that sort of reminded me of a velociraptor, and you own my heart.  Up has it all.  The first several minutes tell a love story the way they don’t really make them anymore–either the “love” or the “story.”  The rest–well, without getting too philosophical about a kids’ flick, it’s about redemption.  Fulfillment–of all kinds.

Frankly, it captivated me.  The Nate Dawg and I, along with his roommate Jake and another friend, set out to see it at Opry Mills tonight as a sort of laid-back hangout time.  Sitting in the midst of them–and not being able to help giggling at ND’s guffawing over the film’s inside Boy-Scout jokes–from almost the very beginning, I knew it was going to be rough.

I don’t like to cry in front of people.

So, I didn’t.  For real.  I’d get a little teary, then stifle it.  But that’s not the important part.

The important part is love.  And adventure.  And how one man finds out that the real adventure of life–you guessed it–is love.  

I’ve known a handful of older couples in my life who’ve made it to 60 or more years together.  This includes my grandparents on my mom’s side, actually.  I’ve sat and stared at pictures of them on their wedding day–my grandmother with perfect red lipstick and my grandfather all skinny with big ears–and wondered how in the world someone could live that long, much less with another person.

It doesn’t happen a lot.  And it happens even more rarely the way it does for the couple in the movie–they meet when they’re little kids and are together from then on.  (And, you know, that whole balloons-lifting-a-house thing is an even rarer thing than all of the above.)

Incidentally, I was listening to White Blood Cells on the way to the mall this evening (inspired by Squirrelly’s FGF), and what should start playing almost as soon as I left after the movie?  ”We’re Going To Be Friends.”  It was a perfect song.  

I guess I’ve missed my chance for that particular love.  And, I doubt I’ll be with anyone for 60+ years even though I plan on staying married until I die, once I get that way in the first place.  It’s a mathematical unlikelihood at this point.  And I really am okay with that–it wasn’t in the cards for me.

There is a love I still believe in, though.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be its own adventure.  It already sort of has–the getting-to-it part, anyway.  I didn’t need a Pixar movie to tell me that, but it sure was a lovely reminder.