A meeting place

While I was growing up, it was obvious my father and I were very different people.

He was a former professional athlete, I was skinny and uncoordinated. He was gregarious, I was a loner. He put together car parts, I put together words.

Obviously, we found long periods of time where we really didn't have much to say.

Yet about the time I was a junior in high school, I learned we'd found a regular meeting place to which I still refer to this day.

It started with a simple quiz. In those days, I ran with some kids who were older, more cultured and artsy. One of them asked me to quickly respond to the question what I thought of when he said Carmen Miranda. "Bananas," I blurted. "Exactly," he said with some astonishment.

Miranda was a 1940s movie musical character who most often danced with a hat comprised of fruit on her head. Now how did I know the character, much less the fruit compilation?

In that same time period, a new fad arose related to those musical. A movie was built of outtakes from the movie musicals over the previous decades called "That's Entertainment." It was a smash hit, and as I watched I questioned how instead of getting an education, I felt deja vu. I'd seen these spectacular dance numbers before.

It was similar when I stumbled across drama. Flipping through channels, I already knew Humphrey Bogart and Gary Cooper and the plots they were playing out.

It was then this hazy undefined memory arose. It seems like a dark den. My father is in a recliner and I'm on a couch. There's no conversation in the memory, but everything from "White Christmas through "Singing in the Rain" to "West Side Story" washed across me. And apparently registered.

It made me a departure from many of my peers in the future. Although I joined my redneck buddies in an appreciation for "Smoky and the Bandit," I found myself sitting alone and transfixed just as much by "Cabaret" and "All That Jazz."

All of our parents provide us with gifts over time. We think of values and education, a general upbringing. Sometimes I think that's just the genetic cycle at its best. But the human trait is often reflected in the things passed on to us subtly and almost unrecognized.

A place where even completely different people can meet for all time.