The above scene is one of my five favorite scenes of all time in film.
Not because of my love of Daniel Stern. Not because I grew up with a crush on Ellen Barkin. But because part of me is Schreivie. That guy who remembers not only record labels, years, baseball statistics, movie trivia, and song titles, but also connects them firmly to a moment, or moments in the past.
I think everyone has a little bit of that in them. I once knew a girl who swore to me with stars in her eyes and a tilted grin, that the Joan Jett & The Blackhearts' version of "Crimson and Clover" took her back instantaneously to the summer of 1981 each and every time she listened to it. She hung back there for a moment or two after telling me that, seemingly hypnotized by the song's echoey refrains, before snapping back to the present moment. I believed her instantly because she seemed a bit embarrassed by the loss of consciousness that took place there, albeit briefly.
She had gone back in time. It's a connection.
The connection doesn't always have to be aural. It can be visceral, like a faint smell of a food not often enjoyed floating in the air at a county fair you remember fondly... or even visual, as in my story to tell, where a picture can take you back in time. Perhaps even with a quick shocked jolt of shortened breath of warm nostalgia you experience if you haven't seen it in some years.
I have a book full of those moments.
Sometime in 1978, My parents ordered me a copy of "The Star Wars Storybook" from the Scholastic Book Club order form, that by now all kids of several generations are familiar with. I reopened it recently after re-discovering it, and had that gasp hit me several times...
The still shot of Luke admiring Obi-Wan's blue light saber after he turns it on for the first time. The X-wing fighter with red laser beams skating perilously close to it, released by the tie-fighter behind in its fierce pursuit. This same exact image actually graced my metal Aladdin lunchbox.
Those images danced me back almost 40 years. An old home in Somers, Wisconsin. A boy in his pajamas, sitting on the rug of his bedroom, just off the living room. Book open wide in his lap, tiny fingers tracing the line of the Tusken Raider's weapon, flipping pages, ignoring text to regale more images as the smell of pancakes and corned beef hash sifted through the air. Chewbacca and Han Solo inside the Falcon against the refrain of Dad calling his sister to come upstairs to eat breakfast.
And C3-PO and RD-D2, with the sharp twinkle of the falling sun's reflection sparking warmly off of their dusty metal. Before DVD, and even VHS, it was books like this that kept the image of the movie alive in a young boy's imagination. It was harder work than re-watching, but in many ways more satisfying, because of the creativity of the mind it elicited in him, as he involved himself in the fantastical storylines.
Yeah, this old book isn't worth much, but it is priceless to me.
As far as books go, It has immense power.
It doesn't contain incantations or rituals, nuclear codes, or manuals of weapon creation. Its strength is tenfold over any of that. It can travel through time and take a person with it. It can bring about smiles, laughter, pride, and sometimes, tears as it is gazed upon. It can reconnect people who haven't seen one another in decades. It's a product of love, emanating from the passion of the creators of its contents, in collaboration with those who would bear it as a gift.
Show me a government classified document that can do any of that.
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