Hollywood Pet Peeves

I used to resent Hollywood for making people think that love unrealistically easy or always clearly going to end up with a happily ever after. If a person believed the Hollywood drivel, they would assume that most love stories followed this pattern....Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl's relationship progresses swimmingly until there is some sort of misunderstanding. Maybe boy kisses someone else while drunk, maybe the girl just happens to believe that the boy kissed another girl. They break up. Boy pretends not to care until he finds out that the girl might be with someone else. Possibly even engaged. Then at the last minute he returns, declares his undying love, girl tells boy that she never stopped loving him and they live happily ever after. Phew! And we all sleep peacefully because "All's right with the world." I do not even have to go into why that is just silly. It is too clearly unrealistic. I think part of the reason I resent this type of story so much is that even those of us who are logical and know it does not work that way, still harbor secret wishes that Hollywood might be right. That while it is not a realistic story, that maybe, just maybe it could happen to us. Ridiculous.

Lately I just discovered an even more frustrating illusion that Hollywood perpetuates. The idea that one could have a life that one's friends are always around, no one moves away and we all have each other forever. Obvious examples: Friends, Will & Grace, Seinfeld, etc. Who lives the kind of life in which all their friends are around all the time? Who lives the kind of life in which the Gang all lives together? I absolutely loved Friends, but I am starting to think that no one, beyond their experiences in the dorms in college ever lives quite so close to so many friends. After college, we all grow up get our own apartments that are not across the hall from our friends and chances are that our friends moved to different cities, and we make new friends. My best friends and favorite people live hours if not states away (Uncle Toby excluded) and I resent that. I want my kids to grow up near their cousins (and not any nieces or nephews by marriage, we all know that those don't count) and by cousins I include all those children of my best friends. I want to have my favorite people close enough that I actually get bored of them. I want to know the boring little things that happen to them everyday. And if I can't have this, I want Hollywood to stop making those stupid shows!