Middleton, Wisconsin—Sunday, April 22, 2007. Earth Day.
In high 70-degree weather, the air is thick and humid; I rush across the beltline highway to Middleton to deliver to my young friend, Genna, a present for her 10th birthday.
Daughter of Mark and Amy, Genna is a sensitive child, blessed with the soul of a poet since she was a tiny baby.
When Genna played competitive soccer for a time as a seven-year-old, she would bore easily.
I remember in the middle of one game, she looked disinterested at the soccer ball and ran off the field and chased a butterfly she saw fly by, to the curiosity of her teammates saying, “Where’s Genna going?”
So, my girlfriend and I picked out from the Net (that my mother was able to find) the perfect present for Genna—the film Camelot (1967, writer - Alan Jay Lerner), that we believed would touch the heart of this natural romantic.
Camelot
If you have not seen the film, do yourself a favor, and take in the ironic, transcendental humanism of this love story/politically revolutionary vision:
ARTHUR: “This is the time of King Arthur, and violence is not strength and compassion is not weakness. We are civilized!”
and
ARTHUR: “Battle? I've won my battle, Pelly. Here's my victory! … What we did will be remembered … One of what we all are, Pelly. Less than a drop in the great blue motion of the sunlit sea. But it seems some of the drops sparkle, Pelly. Some of them do sparkle!"
But, as fortune would have it, the pretty, gift-wrapped Camelot DVD tied to the helium birthday balloon that I picked up at Bergmann’s were somehow sucked out of a three-inch opening in one of my windows while driving on the beltline.
The balloon exploded and the DVD ended up on the side of the highway.
I circled back on Gammon Rd. and Odana Rd. and retrieved the package, no longer prettily wrapped, dirty and bursting at the seams, and with a DVD that looked smudged at best.
I drove up to the house, got out and explained to Genna, her younger brother Nick and her father what had happened. We all laughed and vowed to get another one, if needed. But maybe we could get it cleaned at the Family Video store on Century Avenue.
Genna opens the in-shambles present and laughs, and says “thank you,” and laughs again.
Snakes
But before Family Video store, we need to run to the Middleton conservancy and find some snakes for Genna’s ShareFair program where she was to bring in an animal this week and explain it with facts and a story.
At the conservancy (a true paradise in a wonderful city), Nicky, an seven-year-old who apparently has an eye for snakes, catches five garten snakes, and we had a blast walking back in triumph, showing off the snakes to the interested, young families whom we ran into.
So, we dropped off Genna at a friend’s whom she was scheduled to visit, and then headed off to Family Video.
Restoration
Mark, Genna’s father, went into the store with the DVD, while Nick and I waited outside in the car with the snakes.
Improbably, the nice guy at the store was able to restore the video and repair the scratches using some $600 machine.
So we head home to Genna and Nick’s, said our good-byes, and then I take off to bring a late lunch to my girlfriend, Jackie, home and feeling under the weather.
At home, Jackie and I laughed, and now we await the reaction of Nick and Genna to this masterpiece of film championing love, romance, idealism, and egalitarianism.
A wonderful day in Madison, Wisconsin, and now I can mellow a bit and read Frank Rich.
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