A Man Called Otto

The thing that first caught my attention was the cat.

We'd gone to see "The Fabelmans" a few weeks ago, and in the trailers for upcoming movies there was a snippet from Tom Hanks' latest release, "A Man Called Otto." I wasn't even aware at the time that Hanks had a new movie coming out, but there certainly was a cat involved. Kim and I were determined to see it.

So we did. Yesterday.

I didn't know much about the flick going in, other than it was supposedly about a curmudgeonly old man who'd recently lost his wife, which is what made him a curmudgeon.

I'd taken a quick look at Rotten Tomatoes, the online movie review site, and the critics had given "Otto" a so-so 69 percent rating on the Tomatometer. But what really caught my attention was the audience score of 97 percent. That's a pretty amazing disparity between the professional movie goer and the nonprofessional movie goer, if you follow the numbers. Plus, I'd heard that "Otto" was kind of surprising in how well it was doing at the box office. Better than expected, it seems.

Makes you wonder what do critics know anyhow?

So we bought our popcorn and soft drink and for the next two hours rode the emotional roller coaster that was Otto.

It's humorous in some spots, smaltzy in others. It's pretty predictable, often sentimental, maybe even cheesy at times. So what? I like cheese.

And we both loved it. Add us to the 97 percent. Maybe the 97.1 percent by now.

The movie is yet another serviceable vehicle for Hanks, even though I don't think the role stretches the two-time Oscar winner's talents in any meaningful way. No weird Colonel Parker accents. No out of body experiences like in "Big." No saving Private Ryans. No exceptional Forrest Gumps. Just good ol' steady Tom Hanks, thank you. That's usually more than enough.

I've said more than once that Hanks is our generation's Jimmy Stewart. I stand by that.

There were a couple of other notable performances as well. Mariana Trevino is compassionate and smart as the neighbor who eventually peels away Otto's gruff veneer. And Truman Hanks – one of Tom's three sons in real life – plays the younger version of Otto in lookbacks (not flashbacks). He gets a surprising amount of camera time and is very capable. Must be the family DNA.

It is not a story about redemption, as I've read. More like resurrection. Some people are suggesting this is the movie we need right now, in the midst of our current national dissonance, despair and divide, because of its understated message of hope and healing.

Kim pointed out that the movie, to her, is a love story, and she's not wrong. But I saw it as a love story on many levels: a man and his wife; a man and his neighbors; a man and his neighborhood. Even a man and his cat.

Ah, yes. The cat. The feline, feral in the flick, is unnamed in the movie. In real life, the cat is called Schmagel. Don't ask me why. But I was amazed that you could get a cat to respond as he did for his role in the movie. How do you train cats to perform without them running off somewhere when the director shouts "Action!"

In the end, the movie will tug at your heartstrings. I guarantee it. I didn't know I had that many heartstrings. 

And sometimes, they need to be pulled.

 

 

 

 

A world of (health) care

I discovered that while spending a few days in the hospital, as I did recently for a troublesome bile duct blockage and infection, your world is suddenly condensed.

There's plenty of time for television, of course. And reading.

And pondering.

But beyond that, you'll probably see immediate family members, the occasional doctor or PA making the rounds, and plenty of nurses.

Oh, my. The nurses. It seemed as if I had an entire platoon of RNs looking after me, all of them attentive, all of them pleasant. I'll never remember all of their names.

The one nurse that I will remember, though, is Thomisha. Her 12-hour shifts during my stay seemed to cover me more than the others, including deep into the nights.

One night, probably her last full shift with me before my discharge, I apologized for calling her to my room to unhook me from my IV tree so I could pad my way into the restroom and pee. You pee a lot when taking IVs. You also pee a lot when you are a man in your 70s. I think it's God's little joke on men.

"You're no trouble at all," said Thomisha, an African-American woman who said she has three other jobs besides this one. "I'm lucky because I have good patients on my shift now."

That got me to thinking...

"So does that mean you have some patients who resist everything you try to do for them?"

She stopped what she was doing. She looked at me.

"You have no idea."

Then came a quiet moment that lasted just seconds but was profoundly heavy by what was not spoken. I don't think I was misconstruing her intent. I know nurses sometimes have problem patients. But this, this was very different. She was coming from a world I'll never know. A world I might never understand, or even could.

"You have no idea," she repeated. "Sometimes it makes me wonder why I even do this job."

A few hours later, I was ready to be discharged. All of my nurses have been great, even going back a few years ago to when I had colon surgery, and then later when I had gall bladder surgery. They do jobs I can't comprehend doing. They do grunt work that can be repulsive or uplifting. They deal with the obnoxious and the obvious, as well as the helpless and the needy and the confused. They deal with blood, feces and urine.

They don't need to carry anybody's extra baggage. I'll let you make your own way through my otherwise unspoken moment here.

Thank you, Thomisha. Thank you so much. You'll just never know how much.

•   •   •

My entire hospital stay turned out to be universal. I guess it's because hospitals are universal.

In addition to African-Americans and Caucasians attending to little ol' me, there was an Asian helping with my MRI, an Hispanic with my procedure to remove the stones, with the actual endoscopy performed by a person of Mediterranean descent. I thought my radiologist came from Germany because of her accent, but then she told me she was from Ukraine. Oh, my. And my CT scan was conducted by a hippie with wild, long hair and laid-back personality. We hit it off immediately.

Look, I'll still do anything to avoid going to the hospital. But my world of health care has been phenomenal.

 And I am eternally grateful.

Well, that was different

For the first time in what I can't remember when, we didn't go to a New Year's Eve party.

We weren't invited to any. And, ta da, we weren't devastated.

Actually, it was quite nice.

I figured our New Year's Eve would be a quiet one when, by Wednesday, none of our neighbors talked about having a get-together, as we usually do at somebody's house for this particular moment. Thursday came, and not one word. Then New Year's Eve day, and nothing.

We didn't have to prepare an appetizer. Or come up with a side dish. We didn't have to buy a bottle of champagne, although we had one on hand from a week or so ago, just in case.

That was fine with me. I ended up watching one college bowl game after another, content as a clam in its shell in the sea, snacking on Cheez-its and soft drinks.

There was an added bonus. The weather was lousy, with a light rain falling most of the day and into the early evening. That meant no fireworks going off to annoy us or send my cat into bewildered hiding.

It was kind of neat. The Ohio State-Georgia semifinal College Football Playoff game turned out to be a thriller that went almost right up to the midnight hour. With just a few minutes to go, I looked out our front window and noticed most of our neighbors' house lights were off. Everybody, it seemed, was home or off to a separate non-neighborhood party.

I turned the TV to ABC and we watched the crystal ball at Times Square slowly drop in its awkward countdown. When the New Year arrived, prompt and on time as usual, we shared an old married couple's kiss and klinked together our week-old champagne from heavy iced tea glasses. 

I don't know if all of this was a symptom of our advancing years, but it all seemed somehow appropriate.

And, surprisingly, we both managed to stay up for the ball drop. We were wide awake at midnight, which almost never happens. It must have been that nap we took at 3:30.

•   •   •

I don't know what Kim has in mind for our New Year's Day meal, if she has any plans at all.

She's a girl who is sometimes rooted in tradition, which usually means black-eyed peas and collard greens are somewhere on today's menu. Yuck. I've never been a fan of unappealing New Year's meals. Back in Pennsylvania Dutch country, from where I can draw my roots, the traditional meal was German-based, featuring pork chops and sauerkraut.

I think all this is built around wishes for good health and good fortune for the coming year, but eating something you're not crazy about seems a bit counter-productive to me. Why start the year off with a belly purge?

I guess if worst comes to worst, we can have a Chinese meal, or perhaps Mexican.

Or, if nothing else, I think I still have some Cheez-its and champagne left over.

Here's wishing you all a Happy New Year. I think we deserve it.