the never-ending hitchhiker's guide, and a sleeping child

_Two movies in one night - ridiculous? Probably. But here's what they were: "The Never-Ending Story" and "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The former was a childhood staple of mine that I'd nearly forgotten, rediscovered at the library; the latter is a film based on a book that I'd semi-recently absorbed with a mixture of amused incredulity and profound disappointment.
_"The Never-Ending Story" has its flaws, pervasive and hard to ignore. Outdated special effects, for example, along with a messy hodge podge of convincing and crummy acting, reasonable and ridiculous dialogue, good morals and morals with no more foundation than a zephyr. All things taken together, it's not that great a movie - but there's still something captivating about it; something that rings true and makes my heart nod and chuckle contentedly. Something essentially and delightfully childish. Maybe this feeling stems from nothing more than an incoherent fondness for the fraying threads that wind back through my life and tie this silly film to my own childhood. Maybe I'm just off my onion. But I think that, in the midst of a certain amount of confused babbling, "The Never-Ending Story" has something important and true to say about the vital necessity of imagination, and about the unique power of story.
_I hate trying to write positive media reviews (ergo, my nearly consistent failure to ever do so). In the act of trying to describe and explain what's good about a thing, and why, I always end up feeling like a painted clown pantomiming Shakespeare - exaggerating it and ruining it and killing it. So I'll just leave you with that to chew on for now, and maybe you could watch the movie sometime and see what you think.
_So after I finished watching the above-mentioned film with Eli and Sam, I went downstairs and found the rest of my family watching "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." I watched the last half with them, then went back to the beginning and watched the first half - a fitting approach, I thought, to a tale of such a consummately pointless and wandering nature. For book and movie alike - though the writing is witty and imaginative; and though I cannot deny the existence of periodic goldmines of hilarity therein; and though the narrative is amusing in its absolute failure to make any sense - all this withstanding, in the end the whole thing boils down to little more than a bitterly cynical, despairingly laxadaisical commentary on the ultimate meaninglessness of life. Douglas Adams glories in nothingness. "Eat, drink, and be merry - for tomorrow we die," as they say. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
_Unfortunately, I tend to enjoy writing negative reviews of popular media; but I'm going to cut this one short, because that's not really my point.
_What I really wanted to say, is something like this. Last night I watched two movies, both of them based on the whacked-out imaginations of two very different, yet similarly wide-eyed, lunatics. (I use the term only with the greatest respect and affection.) But neither tale can afford the luxury of being just an empty narrative. One is an angry fist shaken desperately at God and much of what He has called good. The other, though stumbling often over its own feet, leads us gently outside and points out the flickering stars, whispering how beautiful they are, and making us wonder Who put them there. Oh, beware of ever saying something is "just a story." You're living one right now. Stories matter.
_I wandered upstairs after the movies were over, and found the light on in my room. We have bunk beds, and Sam was curled up asleep on the lower one, which is Cami's. On my dresser was an unwrapped chocolate coin with two bites taken out of it - underneath was a yellow sticky note, and in a child's mom-aided scrawl, written "For Tierney. Love, Sam." I guess my heart melted a little around the edges, and I might have either laughed or cried if anything had happened just then; but nothing did. I slid him to the edge of the bed and picked him up, warm and a little sticky where he'd been snuggled against himself. He stirred and opened his eyes just a bit as I carried him across the dark hallway, but he didn't make a sound, and he rolled right over and was still when I laid him in his own bed.
_And I thought, this is why we tell stories. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but this is it. Something in that infinite trust, that warmth and vulnerability, that absolutely childish wonder at this marvelous world we're a part of. The vitality and the joy of making up stories is something that, given the opportunity, most children embrace easily; and it's something that, tragically, most of them seem to forget as they morph into adults. Grow up, to be sure - but never so much that you lose your child's heart. God made us to need stories. That's remarkable.