A Meditation on the Possibility of Love at First Sight between Actor Ryan Reynolds and a Middle-Aged Frump in a Days Inn Parking Lot

There is this scene in the movie Sherman’s March: A Meditation on the Possibility of Romanic Love In the South During an Era of Nuclear Weapons Proliferation, that has resonated with me ever since I first saw it in 1986. A guy--who might be mistaken for Burt Reynolds by your mildly glaucomatous grandmother when she’s not wearing her glasses--is hanging around the parking lot of some Days Inn-type motel in Georgia, hoping to be hired on as a stand-in for the real Burt Reynolds, who is rumored to be filming in the area. Remember, this was shot back in the mid-1980s, when Burt Reynolds--in all his hairy-chested and mustachioed glory--was a national heartthrob, not a punchline – the George Clooney of his generation, if you will.

The scene culminates when a group of frumpy middle-aged ladies – in their pastel-colored polyester pantsuits, outdated beehive-ish hairdos and garish lipstick – swarm the Burt Reynolds look-alike, mistaking him for the famous actor himself. Excited by the chance to see a real-life A-list celebrity in person, the women wiggle and squeal “Buuuurrrrrrtttt! Oh Buuuurrrrrrrtttttt!” to get his attention while thrusting pen and paper at him for his autograph. At one point, it seems as if they might rip open his shirt to get a look at his hairy man-chest. They can hardly contain themselves in this scene that recalls the screaming girls of 1964 when the Beatles gobsmacked America. It’s hilarious – this juxtaposition of the always dowdy with the anachronistically cool – especially when you view the scene in your 20s, seemingly forever out of the clawing grasp of middle age.

After I turned 30-something, I stopped laughing at and started identifying with those wiggly, dowdy middle-aged ladies (picture a group of excitable Edith Bunkers with big hair), because that’s when it dawned on me that I have more in common with the group of frumps than I do with the “hot” guy. (I use the word “hot” here to reflect the consensus of the Edith Bunkers, not my own personal assessment.) If I ever stumble upon my beloved Ryan Reynolds in a Days Inn parking lot, that is how he’ll view me: just another excitable middle-aged frump with a preposterous crush.

Which leads me to the question,‘Why can’t I crush on a celebrity who’d be more “appropriate” as a crush for me?’ Over the years, I’ve had not-at-all-not-even-slightly embarrassing celebrity crushes on Henry Winkler when he was “Fonzie,” former CNN anchor Aaron Brown, British tv landscaper Alan Titchmarsh, comedian Patton Oswalt, and now on Ryan Reynolds. I know I *should* have better taste in celebrity crushes than pretty-boy actor Ryan Reynolds. He’s such an obvious and pedestrian choice as a crush with his soap-opera good looks, his “you’ve-got-to-be-f*cking-kidding-me” body, and his naturally funny talk-show-banter personality. I get it. It’s not cool for me to have a crush on someone so obviously and excessively attractive. I *should* have a crush on someone more socially acceptable like Steve Buscemi or that tv actor who plays the lead character in House -- actors who are excessively brilliant, if not excessively attractive in a mainstream sort of way.

But I don’t. And I wonder what this says about me – this silly notional crush on an impossibly beautiful celebrity I will almost certainly never meet, and if by chance I did, he’s married and is approximately a thousand years younger than me, not to mention the fact that I already have an awesome boyfriend. I shouldn’t waste my time thinking about such frivolities, when I could be doing something useful like learning to speak German or developing an app that helps determine the celebrities who are socially acceptable for you to crush on, based on your demographic group. On the other hand, it amuses me to think about how Ryan Reynolds would react if I told him, “You are the Burt Reynolds of your generation. Now let me get a looksie at that chest.”