My Favorite Things

Many choices require thoughtful consideration before reaching a conclusion and other times it's better to be spontaneous and do the first thing that comes to your mind. This skill shouldn't be that hard but one question usually freezes me in my tracks. I struggle, and usually fail, to choose a favorite. Since my youngest days I have dread the thought that someone might ask what thing I like the most. It doesn't matter if it is food, color, music, subject, teacher, parent, sibling, weather or wife. Okay, I put in that last one just to see if anyone got to the end of the list.

I'll be at a party and will meet someone for the first time. Inevitably we will find a common interest and the question will appear. Even though I know that I could say that my favorite movie is Shawshank Redemption, I have to pause. I know that Shawshank has earned tremendous critical acclaim but more important it speaks intimately to many core values. The very thought of remaining true to one's own self in the face of complete injustice and abject evil and oppression feels like an essential truth of the human condition. But before those words escape my mouth  . . .

I think of Charade. First, almost any movie with Audrey Hepburn could be my favorite movie. But the mixture of mystery, suspense and comedy as portrayed by Hepburn, Grant, Mathau, and Kennedy make me wonder if perhaps that picture better describes what I like in a movie, even more than Shawshank. Especially because of the face that Cary Grant pulls at the very end of the movie as a complete surprise to Ms. Hepburn. Perhaps that should be my favorite.

But again I pause. For the last almost twenty years as a parent I have found myself watching and enjoying more animated movies than live action shows. While our family has enjoyed our share of Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks productions, there is one movie that we have seen more than most of those combined. The movie is called The Magic Adventures of Mumfie. I don't think I have met, in life, a single person who has seen this movie besides someone in our family. My wife received it as a press copy when my daughter was two and we would watch it when she would wake up and I was trying to get her back to sleep.

Since I can quote Mumfie even better than the Princess Bride, which could also be the favorite . . . I am now completely lost as to the answer that I should give to what was probably a completely innocent question. What is my favorite movie? I have absolutely no idea. My only escape is to change the subject. I say, "You know, I really don't have a favorite movie. In fact, the only thing where I can choose a favorite is colors and my favorite color is black."

It's a complete lie, but in paint all colors together make black.