Romance: The Blooper Reel
One of my favorite scenes from Sense and Sensibility is when Kate Winslet’s character gets lost in the rain (thanks to her insatiable passion for the scoundrel Willoughby) and has to be rescued by Colonel Brandon. Alan Rickman plays the slightly senior but nonetheless dashing Colonel Brandon and he sweeps poor Kate/Marianne into his arms and carries her back to the house, where she nearly dies of an infectious fever while he waits by her bedside, driven half mad by his own helplessness.
Over the past few months, I have come to believe that nice relationships are invariably preferable to infectious fevers (not to mention insatiable passions for unscrupulous men) but I still love that scene.
Which is why, when I fell asleep on The Wedding Date’s couch after a particularly taxing day spent with my students in Ocean City, I nearly died of happiness when I realized that he was kneeling down beside me in order to facilitate the process of carrying me to bed.
He doesn’t usually carry me to bed, you see. There was that time in Boston when he carried me from the bedroom into the shower (or maybe it was the other way around?) but that was our first out-of-town overnight so were frolicking around the hotel room like a couple of horny teenagers. Since then, its’ been business as usual most of the time, by which I mean we both walk to our desired destination, and now I know why.
No sooner had he swept me into his arms and carried me down the hall than we bumped into the wall and I scratched my elbow on his thermostat.
So much for romance.
They don’t show you that part in Sense and Sensibility (presumably because the houses didn’t have thermostat’s back then?) and I lost no time in teasing The Wedding Date for his sub-par navigational skills even though the bruise on my elbow wasn’t half the size of the scar on his back.
“Between my parent’s roof deck and your hallway, we’re going to be completely torn up by the cruise!” I laughed.
He laughed as well, but eventually informed me that if I continued going on and on about my injury, he’d leave me to do my own walking from now on. “Even if we get married and buy a house together,” he announced, “You’ll be on your own!”
So I’m going to shut up now. Because despite the fact that my DIY tendencies generally prevent me from giving a convincing damsel-in-distress performance, there’s no way I’m walking over my own my front doorstep when the time comes.
Besides, it was sweet.
And a girl could get used to that.
Kat Echevarría Richter 
7 Responses to “Romance: The Blooper Reel”
It is NEVER like the movies, I would bet everyone out there has one of these stories, you know ours and I will post it, if you get a certain number of replies…so post away folks if you want to hear the landlord and chauffeur’s version.
I don’t know if the world is ready for THAT story!
I’ve been out of town! I want to hear it!!!
This was so sweet. I was looking for book blogs and I stumbled upon yours. I’m excited to follow.
Thanks 🙂 And I do occasionally write about books so stay tuned!
Robert Ferrars and Colonel Brandon were not supposed to be there, though of course the Colonel was quite handy to have around later in the evening when Marianne had her kinda-sorta fainting thingy. (Did she actually faint? Or just… sink?) I was not at all pleased with the way she shouted Willoughby’s name across the room, but it certainly was effective when the whole company went quiet and Miss Grey gave the Look of Death. If they hadn’t played the Willoughby Danger Music right at that moment, I probably would have liked it better. I’m rambling far, far too much and this review is getting way too long, but I’m afraid I’m being too negative so I do want to stick in some positive elements before I start complaining again. I really liked Marianne’s constant letters to Willoughby (and the poor patient footman who had to deal with Miss Why-hasn’t-the-mail-come-yet every single morning). And the whole Elinor/Colonel Brandon mixup was handled quite nicely indeed. This was when I really began to like Colonel Brandon.
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