Last Friday, I confessed to hitting the alarm clock snooze button on Friday mornings.  I have another confession.  I hit it on Mondays, too, but it’s not with Friday’s same joyousness.  There’s no love or happiness at all; it’s full of trepidation and anxiety.  Mondays are like freight trains of unfinished Fridays and each time that annoying clock makes its bleeping beeping, I dreadfully reach over to steal another nine minutes from the ones I wasted over the weekend.

There it goes again.  Beep, beep, beep.

In spite of all reports that New England’s weekend weather was the coldest in recorded history, life went on.  Threats of “deadly temperatures” didn’t stop the Valentine Bandit from plastering red hearts all over the city of Portland and here in the old home town, we still had The World’s Greatest Sleigh Ride.  I drove past on my way to a “Country Jamboree” in Litchfield and folks were lined up, waiting for an old-fashioned turn through the woods.

Somewhere in the now-forever gone weekend, I rented the 2005 film version of Jane Austen’s’ classic novel, Pride and Prejudice.  I can’t count how many times I’ve read the book.  The film version is fine enough, except for the ending.

In the film, the final scene shows Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy on a patio of Pemberley in period pajamas.  They’re married, we assume.  There is this strange dialogue of Darcy asking Bennett if he may call her “Mrs. Darcy” to which she replies that he may, but only when he is “opalescently happy.”

I missed that line when I first saw the film in 2005 but I heard it loud and clear this past weekend.

Plenty of digital space has been dedicated to the movie in the eleven years since its release; I’m the last person to write a film review.  And I’m a little late, too.  But “opalescently happy?”  Really?

I pulled out a copy of the novel and confirmed that Austen didn’t end it with an opalescent salmon of a phrase.

Nevertheless, Mr. and Mrs. Darcy did live happily ever after, both in the book and the movie and they were never intimately acquainted with or visited by zombies.

Please, people.  Stay on script.

FINIS