Baby, it's snow outside

One thing my brother and I share is the love of a good movie. Not having him around to sit down with and enjoy a good dude flick every now and again is one of the bummers of having moved away.

We're both "involved" viewers, meaning when a movie is on, everything else is off. During the playing, we'll share a chuckle at something humorous or a grimace over something brutal - quite often both at the same time cuz that's the kind of movies we both like - but discussion is normally left to the end.

Interruptions are not welcomed.

Many hours (too many) spent with eyes peeled, mouths agape, minds off watching our old black and white Zenith as kinderkidz have imbued us with extraordinary powers of concentration when it comes to boob tube viewage.

Perhaps all those multiple viewings of Gilligan's Island, Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes, Looney Tunes, Jonny Quest, F Troop (this list can go on and on, but I'm paraphrasing here, so bear with me) disabled that neuron path in our brains that allows human behavior during television viewing. Whatever the case, we're not the type to knit or do crossword puzzles while watching a movie.

Like I said, we're involved viewers.

At least we used to be. Something happened on my Brother's Thanksgiving holiday visit (his first ever to my new Okie digs) that was truly remarkable.

Having found a free time slot to slide a DVD into the old Sony and share a fave flick of mine with my lifelong compadre of small screen cinema, long and about the end of the second act I found my bros attention begin to waver away from the letterboxed drama and toward the view out our front landscape window.

It wasn't the movie itself, that much I knew. I had selected a modern classic from my biopic/road movie/need for speed collection titled, The World's Fastest Indian, featuring Anthony Hopkin's as Kiwi cyclist Burt Munro whose adventures in breaking land speed records on his classic Indian motorcycle are the stuff of legends.

So what then could drive my Brother's attention away from the comfort of a cushy couch, a decent flicker on the tele, and the peaceful joy of enjoying a cinematic yarn with his first and oldest movie watcher...

Snow.

About an inch of it fell that afternoon.

The white stuff. Serene, quiet, lithe and graceful, falling from the sky and blanketing the Oklahoma fall landscape outside.

It had been over 20 years (he guessed) since my Brother had actually seen snow falling.

My Mom was digging it too.

I dug them digging it.

City folk, gotta love 'em.