The Kubrick classic and the classmates who loved it
"I remember when this was the Nelson," I volunteer, as my wife and I, take-out coffees in hand, stroll past the Bytowne, Ottawa's premiere art house, with its line-up of twenty-somethings eager to catch some documentary from South Africa.
"That pizza place across the street, that was a Harvey's," I continue. My wife, accustomed to this newfound nostalgia of mine (40's), indulges me with a hollow smile.
"In 1976, the Nelson was playing a revival of 2001:A Space Odyssey. Me and some guys from junior high school went to see it, then we hung out afterwards in the Harvey's because at 14, their hot dogs were all we could afford."
Mike, Randy, Mark and Kenny. Christ, those guys were smart!
They were sci-fi lovers, all of them. Their chatter was populated by words like Asimov, Bradbury, Lovecraft and Clark.
I couldn't hide the fact that I was a square peg that didn't fit their black hole, that my love was something else, something they deemed intellectually lesser: the movies. So this, going to see 2001, was a great fit; one of those all too rare occasions where both our universes aligned, making us citizen s of the same planet.
Usually, it was me, slowly circling - much like the arty ships in 2001 - their vast, mysterious universe, with its unfathomable secrets, its cryptic intelligence, and its numbing capacity to envelope me in a bubble.
On Remembrance Day, we would play hooky and go to Parliament Hill. They would make a game of naming each flag from each country participating in the ceremony...During leisure hours, they would play chess, conduct science experiments, or have day-long tournaments of Risk...in the schoolyard, where we would exchange witticisms, they would spout bon mots worthy of Mad Magazine or even, on a good day, Monty Python.
And yet, each step of the way...they included me.
Did I make them feel superior? Were they trying to mentor me? Was I just another of their intellectual challenges?
Or, in some way of which I was not entirely conscious, did I actually fit in?
"I remember we had this huge debate about whether or not those were real apes in the opening sequence or if thy were men in suits."
"And?," my still willing wife asks, "What did you decide?"
"That they were probably both," I answered, as we neared our car and our rare excursion into the city core concluded. "A gorilla's a gorilla."
