Voice of the Mid-Columbia | Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Wash. |
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| Lucy Luginbill is a freelance writer and regional television producer involved in projects distributed nationally to Christian bookstores. A breast cancer survivor, she resides in Kennewick with her husband Bill. They have two married daughters and six grandchildren. Two dogs and one cat fill the “empty nest.” |
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closeSaturday, Jun. 13, 2009
'The Good, The Bad and the Stinky'
By Lucy Luginbill, Special to the Herald
We like to watch our favorite reality shows, but now that Amazing Race and Survivor are over for the summer my husband, Bill, is into old movies.
I’m into laundry.
The other night, while I was folding clothes in the adjoining room, I heard a familiar tune coming from the TV.
“Isn’t that Clint Eastwood’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?” I yelled over the rinse cycle, remembering the movie that would never end.
“You bet!” Bill said enthusiastically. “We’re getting to the good part. If you recall, we were too busy at the drive-in to watch it.”
Suddenly, the years rolled away. It was a warm summer night.
Our Volkswagen Beetle may have been wedged in between other moviegoers, but we were alone — except for our Doberman Pincher and our white long-haired cat.
At the time, it had seemed like a good idea to bring Solo and Precious along, but within the first five minutes the dog steamed up the windows and we couldn’t see a thing.
To compensate, we rolled them down — VW’s only have front windows that open — and then readjusted to allow three heads in the front seat, one of which was drooling out the window.
Meanwhile, Precious realized that her cat box hadn’t been included with the movie tickets. Shortly thereafter, from the backseat floorboard there rose an unmistakable aroma.
Our car doors flew open. From the light of the movie screen, our worst fears were confirmed.
“What should I do about this mess?” I whined as Clint gunned down another bad guy.
“Just scoop it up with your Coke cup and set it on the ground. When it’s intermission we’ll deal with it,” Bill whispered, his eyes searching for the desperadoes.
Suddenly, there was a shriek from the car parked next to ours.
“Eeuw! Their dog stinks!” they yelled while frantically rolling up their windows and throwing their car into reverse. “Why did they bring that animal to the show!”
We were asking the same thing. And it was ANIMALS.
If the story ended here, it would have received a bad enough review. But the action in the parking lot continued. Even Clint Eastwood couldn’t hold a pistol to the scene that was unfolding.
As gun slingers shot their way through the remainder of the movie, our Precious slipped into the darkness through the open VW window. This precipitated a frantic search that undoubtedly irritated scores of lovers.
Still, there was a happy ending. Clint got his man. We got our cat.
Looking back on that night, it’s probably when we first got hooked on reality shows, seeing as how we were already starring in our own.
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