Secrets of Emails and Ruined Bookstores

Last night I was ready to sit down and relax with a movie. Tired of all the movies we own, I thought I would flip around the channels and find something on tv. There it was....You've Got Mail.

When I think of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, I think of, You've Got Mail and Sleepless in Seattle. In my mind I keep them straight like this: One is "bookstores and email," and the other one is "kid, radio show, and An Affair to Remember"

I was excited. I was time to take a trip back to the 90's, when people actually used AOL (Did people really do that? I didn't.) and sent emails to strangers (technically, I guess I do this most every day now). When Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were the king and queen of Nora Ephron land - an imaginary place where things always work out, cuteness abounds, and love triumphs in the end.

I start watching "Bookstores and Email." Meg Ryan is so cute, and I just fall in love with her children's bookstore, The Shop Around the Corner, the store she inherited from her mother. Meg talks about twirling (one of the best thing about being a girl, and wearing a frilly dress) and these books about shoes (Dancing Shoes, Skating Shoes.....are these real books? Because if they are I feel the need to read them), and all the words, beautiful Nora Ephron words. I'm happy.

Some of the things they write in those emails feels so close to me, like, "bouquets of #2 pencils." I have a secret love affair with office supplies, and my heart soars at the thought of receiving a bouquet of #2 pencils. Much better than roses.

About halfway through the movie it hits me. The reason I don't own this movie. The thing that kills all of the warm fuzzy feelings deep inside of me. The ruination of Tom Hanks forever in my world:  At the end of the movie, she is forced to close her bookstore. She loses everything her mother worked so hard to build, everything she loved. Her mother's legacy. Gone. Ruined. Destroyed.

Tom Hanks single-handedly tears her world apart.

....and then she just forgives him, and they walk off into the distance, presumably to live happily ever after.

WHAT? Who is buying this? Who can honestly watch this movie and forgive Tom Hanks for destroying her beautiful bookstore? Not me.

I feel that losing Helen Hunt and being forced to live on a deserted island with only a volleyball named Wilson to talk to was almost punishment enough for what he did to Meg Ryan and her Shop Around the Corner. Almost. Because in my world, apparently the two are related.