29: Blazing Saddles

1974
I think Cary, North Carolina
with my mom and dad-technically, I was in utero...

This used to come on once a year-I'm guessing on CBS because it was a Friday night and it meant no Dallas or Falcon Crest that week. Bummer, one week without Lance...

Every year without fail, my mom would remind me of the campfire scene. Apparently, when my mom and dad went to see it in the movie theater the summer of 1974, I kicked her bladder until she had to leave the theater.   She missed the most famous scene in comedy history. Motherhood is all about sacrifice isn't it?   She didn't get to see cowboys passing gas around a campfire on the big screen because of me.  Sorry mom-you should have known that was only the beginning.  But thirty years later, I made it through Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...so there!

Blazing Saddles is just the standard slapstick comedy. I'm sure it is on every Cinema 101 syllabus for a comedy piece.  I only remember Willy Wonka was in the cast and I didn't like the ending when they were running through the other sets.  I don't do slapstick.  I like wit. If you want me to laugh, you better make the joke fairly intelligent.  Having just said that, before cable exploded, you better believe I watched it once a year with my brother and sister.  It was sure to come on a month or two after the Wizard of Oz.

Years went by...we watched it in Texas, we watched it in Illinois, and then we moved to Greensboro, North Carolina. That was second grade.   For the record, it was extremely edited for television.

That was my last move until college. I remember my first day of school.  My dad took me-my mom was in graduate school.

My Dad handed an index card to the very large teacher in the doorway of my new classroom. She looked at it and said, "Ray lives in your neighborhood, sit next to him. He'll help you on the bus too."

Without writing another book altogether, he helped me on the bus all right.

Ray and I had a love/hate relationship from that very first day in 1983.  Very few people could just walk into my house, go up to my room, and spray perfume all over the place while putting on lip gloss and saying, "No, this isn't me."

On my 13th birthday, he wanted to give me diamond earrings. His mother told him to buy dusting powder instead.  He told her I was not the type to clean house.  I am saving those studs for Frances!

He had a younger brother that used to tease me for lack of driving skills. I was so horrible my parents paid for extra lessons.  Michael would see me pull up with the private teacher and yell, "Pagie can't drive! Pagie can't drive!"  I still can't..who am I kidding?

On and on this went. Until we were thirty and life does what it does and we lost Michael, Ray's younger brother.

I paced back and forth in my house in Fuquay-Varina, NC. What to do?  What to say?  I had a two year old and was pregnant with my first son.  How do I reach out to someone who was such a part of my rich history?

I did what only Page would do....

I wrote him a ten page letter, and sent him a copy of Blazing Saddles on DVD.

He still has the letter, and it is for him and his parents only, but I will say I wrote this:

Laughter heals all...Raymond Alan, on really bad days, promise me you will wrap up in a blanket and watch this DVD.

My mother, eight months pregnant with me when she saw the original film, hit the roof:

YOU DID WHAT???? YOU SENT HIM WHAT????

She obviously didn't know about all the times he threw rocks at my window for late night swims at Ryan's house.

I did the right thing for an old friend. And you will do the right thing, when life presents the sadder side to you.  You will recall all those little moments from your childhood and bring them to the surface. You will evolve and move on, but never forget the people you grew up with and be there for them in times of need.

And for the record, I still don't clean house or drive....