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My Mother the Fraud There is a story in my family that we like to tell, that is taken out and dusted off and told and retold at every holiday gathering or get-together or reunion. It involves my mother, post-war America's love affair with the movies and the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Lion. The way I recall the story is that my Uncle Verne rounded up the entire family one evening when my mother was very young to take them out to see the motion picture "Shane," George Steven's 1953 classic tale of a gunfighter trying to put his violent past behind him. Now, going out to the movies in those days was not exactly the quick jaunt down to local megaplex that you and I take for granted today. No, back in the Gary, Indiana of the 1950s, a night at the cinema for the working-class Koester family was a hoity-toity affair indeed, one filled with much anticipation for whatever wonders the Golden Age of Hollywood had in store. So my mother and her brothers and her sister and her parents all made the trek out to the movie house, dressed in their finery to watch the heroic Alan Ladd do battle with leering hired gun Jack Palance. The theater lights dimmed, the curtain pulled back and a quiet murmur of excitement ripped through the audience. Which, so the story goes, is when the trademark MGM lion appeared on the screen, roaring his familiar, mighty roar. Which is also the time my mother apparently was so excited. A very young girl at the time, my mother had never seen a lion before, much less a 40-foot-image of a horrible, snarling one. So she began uncontrollably, so much so that no amount of soothing talk from my grandmother would make her stop... even after the other movie theater patrons began hurling boxes of popcorn and bon-bons and raisinets at my hapless relatives. And so, my family's night at the movies was ruined, all because of my mother and her irrational fear of a two-dimensional image of a lion. All her brothers and her sister and her parents had to pile back into the car and head back home without ever thrilling to Loyal Griggs' stunning cinematography, recoiling as Palance guns down the helpless Elisha Cook Jr., or wiping away a tear as the little boy scurries after Ladd pleading with him to "come back, Shane." Which made my Uncle Verne understandably grumpy for many years to come. As I said, this story has been handed down from relative to relative in the Koester-Michaels clan. My mother has told her children and we will tell our children -- those of us who are likely to have children, anyway. Because the story is an essential part of our heritage, a vital thread in the tapestry of our daily lives, part and parcel of what it is to be a Michaels. Or so I thought. Because the other day I rented "Shane" and I learned that my mother is full of hooey. I sat down with my popcorn and my soda and my box of Goobers all set to enjoy a classic Hollywood western while reliving a little family history. "Soon, the lion will come on the screen," I thought to myself, unless there was somebody else in the room who could read my mind. "The same lion that made my mother weep more than four decades ago." Only when the film started, no lion. Just a peaceful mountain range. Because "Shane" is a Paramount release, not a product of MGM. I sat there, mouth agape, unable to even enjoy the scene where Alan Ladd beats the holy crap out of Ben Johnson. Had my mother been telling vile fibs all these years? Was a story that I had been raised on and cherished and hoped one day to share with others little more than a pack of lies? And what else hadn't my mother been telling the truth about? Was her maiden name really Koester? Was Uncle Verne really my uncle? Was I even her son? And all those times she told me she loved me, were those conveniently little lies as well? I can get pretty emotional about these sorts of things. So I called up my mother, that instant, and after her perfunctory pleas that I get a girlfriend and go to church regularly and take my girlfriend with me when I go to church, I cut straight to the crux of the matter. "What movie did you go see when you were a little girl that you began crying uncontrollably because the MGM Lion frightened you out of your wits?" I demanded. "That was so long ago," my mother said, "I'm sure I don't remember." I gulped a reluctant gulp. Time to find out whether the entire foundation of my family life was nothing but a house of cards. "It wasn't.... 'Shane,' was it?" "Oh no, I saw 'Shane' when I was a little older. Eight years old or so." "But... I always thought it was 'Shane' where you had to leave the theater." "It was," my mother said. "But that time, we had to leave the theater because my sister got sick. She had the flu and began throwing up. So we had to leave the theater with about 30 minutes left to go in the movie." "Not because of the lion?" "No, that was a different movie. You've confused the two stories," she said. "I never found out how it ended." "How what ended?" "'Shane.' Since we left, I never saw the ending. "Oh," I said. "It turns out that 'Rosebud' was the sled." My mother thought about that for a second. "Yes," she said. "That makes sense." So, thankfully, I had just gotten my amusing familial anecdotes all crossed up. My mother did leave the theater without seeing the end of "Shane" -- not because of the non-existent MGM lion as I first suspected, but because of my Aunt Karen's vomit. And that's a relief. Because order has once again been restored to my world. My memories have been found to be genuine. The stories I hold so dear can continue to be told. Unless my fiendish mother was just lying to cover up her tracks, that is. |
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