An Anniversary Interlude

Today is the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Which makes it as good a day as any to make an embarrassing confession: when I was a kid I was obsessed with the Titanic. I built models of the ship, read every book I could find on it and for a time I was the youngest member of the Titanic Historical Society. I vividly remember my poor aunt taking me to one of their meetings and being interviewed in the paper. In my defense, you can see why I would find the subject fascinating: I was five when the wreck was discovered and the guy who found it was based out of Woods Hole on Cape Cod. So at the time it seemed perfectly logical that I would someday be able to follow in his footsteps. Not to mention, searching for lost ships is basically treasure hunting. What five year-old doesn't want to go on a treasure hunt? Eventually, like most childhood obsessions such as my love of dinosaurs, my fascination with the Titanic has mostly faded away, though not totally. I still have more Titanic facts than I need rattling around in my head and have very strong opinions that people should not be bringing things up from the wreck site. (They call it "preserving history", I call it "grave robbing.") I guess in some ways I'll never totally stop being intrigued by it.

Now, because of the date you may be expecting me to play the theme song from the movie "Titanic." Well, I'm not going to and not just because it would be too easy. I actually have a major beef with that movie, mostly because it made the Titanic a little too cool. Like a hipster getting pissy when the band they knew about first suddenly goes mainstream, I resent that movie for making the "Titanic" so popular they made it into rides at the carnival. Also, one summer I got a temp job at a movie distribution center and it was the same year that movie came out on video, which means I spent most of my summer packing hundreds of copies of it into boxes that weighed a ton. Just like I was sick of beer after two seasons of stocking bars at Gillette Stadium, I was sick of Leonardo DiCaprio's face by the end of the summer. It is probably one of the reasons I have never sat through an entire showing of that movie. (I always jump in about an hour after it starts, once the ship hits the iceberg. I feel like I can guess what I missed and my guess is that I haven't missed much.) Instead we're going with another sailing song. Trust me, it's for the best.