A Matter of Perception

by

Anne Michael

Normally, on a Sunday afternoon, my husband is engrossed in a car race or a movie. I usually fritter the day away with my nose stuck in a book, oblivious to the dust, the time and the rest of the world. This past Sunday, Steve was perplexed to find me zipping around the kitchen like a manic squirrel when he emerged, in search of sustenance, from “the cave”—our euphemistic term for the room in which our big screen TV is housed. “You’re not reading? Are you done with your book? Do you feel okay?” he asked with a look of concern on his face. His loving disquiet, though appreciated, surprised me. I guess it shouldn’t have.

My sweet spouse regards the losing of myself in a book as dangerous as throwing lighter fluid on smoldering charcoal. Poof!—I’ll be gone in a puff of smoke. When I start reading a book, he has observed, it is as though I become a bug that has molted leaving only the outside shell. My body looks like it is still there, but the person he knows is not. He worries that I will, one day, be sucked into a book and never be able to find my way out again. He imagines, as well, that it is not healthy. As a voracious reader, I wholeheartedly disagree with his concerns. If I cannot immerse myself totally in a book or story—forgetting who I am or where I am—it is just not a good book. If I can find an epic series of the sort that George R.R. Martin or Diana Gabaldon write, so much the better. Even the slimmest of tomes should grab me from the inside out and hold me still. I suppose that setting supper down in front of Steve one evening and saying “will that be all, milord?” and “by your leave” led him to believe I was once again on the precipice of disappearing into my own head completely. 

So I would have thought he would be insanely pleased on that Sunday—a movie Sunday—to find me fully immersed in reality and out of a book.

About two weeks earlier, we had a discussion about the reading of books versus the watching of movies. As passionate as I am about books, Steve is equally so when it comes to movies. I’d been reading Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden, waiting for Steve to finish his daily ablutions. Our plans for the day were to take a leisurely ride to a restaurant situated on the Intracoastal Waterway and treat ourselves to a late lunch of grouper sandwiches. We planned to sit on the deck and enjoy the sun, the water and the crazy people on the waterway. Tearing my eyes away from the pages with great difficulty, I looked at my hubby, smelling deliciously of Aramis, as he entered the room. “Aaah, Steve-san,” I said without a thought, “you look most handsome.” That sentence spurred a rerun of our ongoing conflict of personal philosophy on the question of book versus movie. It was the topic of conversation that languid afternoon, the sun and water and crazy people unnoticed as we lingered over lunch, each trying to persuade the other to our viewpoint.

Steve adores movies. He can watch the same one repeatedly, searching for things happening in the background that he missed during the previous viewing(s). It seems to me that he has a heavy emotional interest in the Oceans Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen sagas these days. He revels in epic movies. He can quote lines from almost any movie with barely a breath and apply it to any given situation. He thrives on stories where the bad guys get their comeuppance. He finds nothing odd about going from one movie directly into another with nothing more than perhaps a smoke or snack break before losing himself to the next cinematographer’s magic.

I regard an endless diet of movies as akin to living on Whoopie Pies and Mountain Dew—cloyingly sweet and of no nutritional value whatsoever. Movies leave nothing to my imagination. One of the joys of reading a book is that my imagination gets to stretch. The characters and the backgrounds are left to the richness of my own imagination rather than seeing a story through someone else’s eyes.

This is a conversation we’ve had many times over the years we’ve been together. Sometimes those conversations have been strident. For the most part, they are usually good natured as we each endeavor to persuade the other to our own point of view. I do wonder, from time to time, how it is possible for two such different outlooks, inside two stubborn psyches to survive beneath one roof.  There is, however, one premise on which we agree: we both adore a good story. That penchant for a great tale fuels many a conversation. It is this ongoing dialogue that keeps us in touch and transcends the mundane daily details.

Steve is fond of saying that “men are visual creatures” as a justification for being obsessed with movies. I don’t know about all men, but I do know that is true for him. If I ask him to imagine what a wall would look like painted in sage he is utterly lost. He has to see the color on the wall to know. His dedication to visuals hold just as true for a bikini-clad babe on the beach, a great burger, a paint color or a story told on the silver screen; hence his passion. It is only with the impetus of visuals like this that his imagination can fire and run for days like a car with a full tank of gas. I don’t know about other women, but I don’t need to see something to imagine it. The cues I need are far more subtle. I am transported by a scent on the breeze, an older couple walking hand in hand, a pair of sneakers hanging on telephone wires or the description of a mythical beast. These sorts of things set my imagination roaring like a California firestorm caused by a mere spark.

I don’t believe we will ever change the other’s opinion, but it is fun trying.  We have, however, reached a wonderful compromise. I will always watch a movie with him that is based on a book that I’ve read. As we watch, I will tell him those bits that are in the book and missing from the movie. He will look for the visual cues that tell more of the story and point them out to me. (Sadly, however, he will not read the book on which a movie is based.)

If there were no books and no movies and we lived in the time of  Bards, I strongly suspect Steve would be the teller of tales based on where he’d been and who he had seen. I am certain I would always look forward to being at his fire, able to lose myself in his stories. I’d like to think it is that very thing that makes the differences between us work so well.  Now that I think about it, I guess Steve’s concern that Sunday that I wasn’t lost in a book should not have come as a surprise. I suspect that the books-versus-movies argument will go on until we are done with living. I still have hope that I can persuade him to my side. But even if I can’t, at least we each know the other will always be there to pull us out when we get lost in a good story.


At age 10, Anne realized she was never going to get to be Miss America since reading a book was not an acceptable talent. So she went on to get a job and raise a family. Along the way, she fixed meals, picked up toys, helped with homework, and collected a drawer full of rejection slips for her “great American novel.” It was not all bad, however, since she ended up wallpapering a closet with them. She currently designs and creates greeting cards for her tiny company, The Frog Prints, LLC, and also works full-time as a Training Specialist. Anne is currently tethered to reality by a loving spouse, two dogs and the occasional hurricane that blows through Florida, although falling headlong and happily into a book is still her favorite “talent.” Contact Anne.