Saturday, October 29, 2022

 

 


I Dream of ……

By Steven P. Marini

 

Have you ever met a movie star before the person was a movie star?

  A long time ago in a galaxy far away, I was a thirty-year old married man taking a one-year leave of absence from work to complete a Masters in Educational Technology from Boston University. That’s a small clue. Have you guessed the star yet?

  I was given a Graduate Assistantship, which is a form of financial aid. I had to work fifteen hours a week in the Educational Technology Department along with several grad and undergrad students. Among them was my future movie star.

  She was very tall (six feet, I believe) and strikingly beautiful of face and figure, including great big……..dimples. Hey, what did you think I was going to say? Clean it up.  Her style of dress might be labeled a cross between Early Fidel Castro and Disneyland. A typical day might find her in baggy green fatigue pants, a Mickey Mouse t-shirt and different colored socks. Now you’ve got the gender. Have you got her name yet?

  Although I never had a personal conversation with her, there was usually talk among the few students on duty at any time. A memorable group talk was dominated by this young lady about the movie Carrie. What struck me was the depth of her interest in the movie. She spoke of Carrie, the character, as if she was a real person. I guess that for a future movie star, you must really have to be able to get into it like that.

  A few years after my B.U. experience, I ran into a former colleague named Mary. We talked about the people we remembered and she mentioned a girl named ……… who had become a model in New York. I wasn’t surprised because of her beauty and height.

  Several years later, I was attending a conference in Colorado Springs. As it turned out, it was Oscar night, the presenting of the Academy Awards. That’s something I have little interest in, but I decided to leave it running on the hotel room TV while I nursed a drink and directed my attention to something else. Something happened, however, that caught my attention. A young woman was announced as the winner for the Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Accidental Tourist and, as she made her acceptance speech, I focused on the TV and this striking young lady. I couldn’t place her, but I think you know where I am going.

  The sound of her voice stunned me. It was the same voice I had heard many years ago talking about Carrie. Surely some of you have identified her by now. When I studied her face closely on the TV, it all came together for me. It was Geena Davis. She had gone from a college kid in fatigue pants to a glamorous movie star.  I was dumfounded when I learned that she had also been in The Fly and Beetlejuice, both of which I had seen and had not recognized her.

  I also learned of another coincidence with Geena. My alma mater is a very small school in New Hampshire called New England College. I graduated in 1973. Geena Davis attended NEC in 1974 and 1975, and we met up at Boston University in 1976 working financial aid in the same department. I told my wife, “She must be chasing me.”

 



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