! Backward Boys

Saturday evening, the week's hired film, click-click, click-click while we chewed fruit gums and shouted FOCUS! from time to time when the reel changed; and after The White Hell of Pitz Palu or The Lost Horizon, and Mickey in black and white and Corky the Cat; after the hired films and the occasional black potato growing on the screen when the celluloid caught fire, the home movies run backwards: and the world was a magic kingdom - things jumped from nowhere into your hands like the world's top ball player; while you ate, the plate filled instead of emptied; and the happy smiles-for-the-camera became inane dissociated grins as if you knew you were being totally idiotic but had no control... Suppose that life, on Saturday evening, did just that for real: Saturday's trashy film would take on the solemn inevitability of Greek tragedy; shoplifting would be an act of humble charity as one slipped the goods- blink-back onto the counter; and we the older would look so eagerly forward to childishness and irresponsibility (as we alas will; but then more agile and more loved with it) : like teenagers, go to bed alert and wake up tired... and in the bathroom - no, let's not go there... and then at midnight, Cinderella Time would revert to real time. Boing..oing..oing.. But under the covers as we blissed off to sleep, a great big, wrinkled, toothy grin...