One of the first happy years in my life was 1981. Every year of my adult life I have written new year objectives. New years resolutions are crystal, beautiful and broken easily, while objectives give me the whole year to complete and are, therefore, much kinder to the maker. And 1981 was the first year in which I deliberately sought to be kind to myself. Previously, I had thrashed myself with a long list of harsh objectives like exercise more and stop being such a wimp. In 1981 I set for myself only a single objective: see fifty movies. With modern technology, that’s achievable without getting off the couch. But in 1981, it meant that I had to go to a physical theater fifty times. My son was six in that year, so movies with him were a delight. He and I saw The Empire Strikes Back. I also saw it with my mother. And probably once again by myself. I saw the Rocky Horror Picture Show twice, the first time without any toast, toilet paper, or confetti. Imagine. But for me, the fondest memory of the completion of that objective, for complete it I did, was the excursion to a triple feature at the Suburban World in Uptown. The movies were The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and Jason and the Argonauts. I remember today, nearly forty years later, that joyful apex of the journey of fifty movies. I sat in the middle of the ground floor of the Suburban, not in the balcony. Memory says that there were about one hundred people in the audience. There was me, at thirty years old, and everybody else, the oldest of which was probably fourteen. The sweetest moment was becoming aware of the steady pelting of candy everybody on the ground floor suffered. That afternoon, thanks to the kids in the balcony, it rained Jujubes, Dots, Good & Plentys, and Bit-O-Honeys in the Suburban World. I laughed out loud at the improbability, preposterousness, and frivolity of the moment, which was exactly what I needed. I had broken through; I began enjoying life.
