We went down in the basement, see. . . all us kids. . . it was a real old building. . . it was dark and the steps were so worn there were hollows in them from all those feet. . .
. . . and the teacher would say Now Boys and Girls, today we will be watching a Fillum. We were all so happy to be out of class and watching a Fillum that we didn't care what was in it. The projector made a very loud clattery noise and there was always this ring-y jingly sound in the background. It was called Bell & Howell, but my brother secretly called it Hell and Bowel. It was very dark in the basement and a bit scary, but not too bad because we had each other and could hold hands in the dark. We loved to watch the countdown at the beginning of the Fillum, it was like a rocket going off and we wanted to count, but nobody said it out loud because it was a really strict old school and you didn't say anything. But we all noticed there was never a 2 or a 1.
The Fillums were all in black and white, so no way could we be seeing colors. We didn't see colors on TV either. The Fillums were about hygiene and Arctic explorers and Getting Along with your Parents. We only saw colors at the movies and that wasn't very often. Later when we went to the newer school, there were movies we went to, the Capitol Theatre or the Centre, with a girl friend named Kim. We saw Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion and The Trouble with Angels and Zebra in the Kitchen. We bought Mackintosh's toffee and sucked on it during the show. When people talked about each other's dreams, they always asked, "Do you dream in color?" If somebody dreamed in color, it was a very big deal.
Time goes very fast now. Very fast. Very fast. And there's no getting it back. You can't run the movie backwards any more, and if you did, I mean, if you kept on doing that, eventually you would just disappear.
