Enjoying the Anticipation

So, the weather has been beautiful these last couple of days. Roomie and I actually walked to dinner last night without coats. It was magical. So much so that I was almost ready to do my warm weather dance. Which I have no intention of sharing with you. Because then you’d be in such reverence of my sweet moves that you’d feel insecure about your own dancing for the rest of your lives. And I just couldn’t live with myself if I deprived you of lives of dancing. So, I’ll keep it to myself, save to say that it’s almost time. (I suggest you get to practicing your own warm weather dances. Don’t want to be caught unprepared when the time comes.)

This is all beside the point, though. The point is that even though I know that we likely have another couple months of the Miser brothers trying to outdo each other, I choose to trick myself into believing that the warm weather is here to stay. Ignoring the possibility of me being caught without the needed number of layers when the cold swoops back in, there is only one real problem with my chosen delusion: I want my summer movies now.

I need a waning winter superhero pick-me-up. I want to know how Lincoln handled the undead during this tenure as President. Aliens. Fairy tales. Some good, old fashioned ‘80s rock. Maybe throw in something having to do with spies, and I’m set.

But, I know I can’t have any of this yet. And I get why.

I remember that anticipation as I entered those last couple months of school. I was just…so…close…to getting out of there. To that blissful feeling of summer vacation. And then it came, the glory of that last day of school. Three months of freedom. Endless possibilities.

With all the things that take up residence in the post-high school mind, it can be difficult to recapture that feeling of ultimate freedom (though, I do find it helps if you hold your arms above your head and run full tilt down your office hallway, screaming. People may look at you funny, but that’s just a bonus). However, we can still get that sense of anticipation. That belief that something awesome is accompanying the warm weather on its journey to reach us.

Last summer I was taking night classes and working, but as I stood on line for the midnight showing of Harry Potter, I felt like a little kid. Giddy is really the only word to properly describe it. It didn’t matter than I had a paper due in a few days or that I’d just been assigned some time-intensive projects at work. That was Future Kelly’s problem and this was Present Kelly’s time. And Present Kelly was filled with barely containable mirth and frivolity.

So, that’s why, no matter how much I want my summer movies immediately, I can accept the wait. I like the anticipation. I like feeling just the slightest bit bummed when the previews end and the movie starts, because that means that it’s closer to being over (as illogical as that sounds). Because in those darkened theaters, we’re all just little kids again – not really sure of what’s coming next and super excited about it.