Little Manhattan

Was hit by insomnia a couple of nights back, so I decided to go through our (pirated) DVD collection. You can never force me to watch a scary movie all alone in the middle of the night, so I settled for Little Manhattan instead.

It's all about two kids, Gabe and Rosemary, aged 10 and 11 respectively, who found themselves falling in love with each other in the Big Apple. Well, actually, I'm only certain of Gabe's feelings towards Rosemary; whether or not Rosemary feels the same way, I am not sure.

Yeah yeah, what do kids know about love, right? If sometimes, as adults, we question if we really do know what love is all about, what more kids?! Actually, I laughed out loud when Gabe told Rosemary he loved her at the end of the film, because he looked so earnest saying it, as if his life depended on it. And yes, at the back of my mind, a voice kept saying, it's not the end of the world, buddy.. Dami mo pang kakainin na bigas bago ka makaramdam ng true love. Hehehe :)

There were some scenes though that stuck out. They were searching for an apartment for Gabe's dad. On their way home, they decided not to take the subway and instead used Gabe's scooter for around 60+ blocks. And, NY blocks are not in any way comparable to Manila blocks where they're only several feet apart. Malayo yung pagitan ng blocks sa kanila. But it was heart-warming when Gabe said he didn't even feel the least bit tired because Rosemary had her arms wrapped around his waist the whole ride.

In a weird way, it's exactly what we go through when we're a bit older - we don't mind the pains, the constant squabbling, the occasional tears, because we know what we have on the good days is soooo much bigger and sweeter than anything that can ever happen in a bad day. Ako minsan guilty for taking note of the bad days rather than the good days or the bad things rather than the good things, so I was touched by the purity of the emotion that Gabe felt. And I wonder why it escapes us as we grow old.. Feeling ko talaga, our focus gets shifted to the trivial things that we lose sight of the bigger picture. Example ako... Naiinis ako pag may nakakalimutan si Jai na mga bagay-bagay and I sometimes let it consume me rather than think about all those other days when I'm being my usual bratty self and he never loses his patience with me. Instead, he'll go out of his way to turn my frowns into smiles.

Kids' pains are trivial in a sense that it's something simple as bruising a knee, being picked last in gym. But they forget about it and concentrate on the bigger things. We might say our pains as adults are not trivial, because they usually concern finances, loss of trust, lack of communication, glaring differences... But I feel they become trivial when we consciously remind ourselves that there are more important things present in our lives.


------

Since the setting of the movie was Manhattan, I couldn't help but get nostalgic over NY (funny, it feels like it was just yesterday but the truth is, we flew out around Oct 13 of last year...). You know those moments when you see places in a movie that you've actually been to? I was like, uy, Soho yun! Uy, subway! Uy, Central Park!

It's a bit bittersweet, because I'm leaving, and any possibility of going to different places with Jai just got thrown out the window. I know we can still have trips out of the country but we would be spending our own money na. It's different when you're spending the company's money, because you almost have no constraint on finances, so you can go wherever you want to go :) Hehe. On the bright side, puwede na kami sabay mag-leave :) That's a good thing :)