My Husband, The Pretty Woman Expert

This weekend, we watched The Princess Diaries with The Daughters. We'd all seen it before, but it had been a while, so we stayed in our PJs (except Brian because, well, he doesn't officially have PJs), and we watch Anne Hatheway transform before our very eyes from a nerdy, geeky teenager to a graceful, beautiful princess. As the movie ended with all the main characters out on the royal dance floor, and Hector Elizondo's character asking to dance with the Queen of Genovia (played by Mary Poppins), I sighed and said, "I've loved Hector since he was the concierge at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel."

Source
I'd like to thank the internet for proving that I was right with one
little Google search.

Brian, thinking he's so smart said, "He wasn't the concierge."

I, thinking I had shown my true class, said, "Well, however you pronounce con-see-air-guh. Or maybe he was the hotel general manager."

"No," Brian continued to argue, "He was the store manager who did major sucking up to Richard Gere."

"Don't you mean he did major sucking up to Edward Lewis," I said. He rolled his eyes. "Hector," I continued, "was the hotel guy."

Then, Brian said a few words that made me wonder what else I didn't know about him: "I think I've seen Pretty Woman more times than you have."

["King Of Wishful Thinking" soundtrack scratches to silence] WHAT?!?!

Brian and I are (for all intents and purposes) the same age. The fact that he's (literally and legally) two years younger than me really doesn't change the fact that our coming-of-age and rites-of-passage happened at about the same time.

I was a sophomore in college when Pretty Woman was released. Brian had just graduated high school. I remember watching Pretty Woman with my friends time and again wishing that I had Julia Roberts Vivian Ward's life, minus the whole street walking bit. (I'd settle for Julia Roberts' life as well, FYI.) Who wouldn't want some man in a worth-more-than-my-current-house sports car to whisk her away to a high-rise penthouse, spend obscene amounts of money on her, and then rescue her in a limo and live happily ever after?

That was the message I got from Pretty Woman: If the fairy tale could happen to a prostitute, it could happen to a 20-year-old college sophomore in the middle of Oklahoma. And that message--that dream--is what prompted me to watch Pretty Woman no less than a gajillion times at my apartment in Scholars Inn on my rented VCR player.

It was also that dream that prompted me to wonder about Brian's past. How in the world had an 18-year old high school senior-slash-college freshman become an expert on one of the best chick-flicks ever made? Was that his experimental time during college? Was his sensitivity a guise for something ... more? Was my amazing husband secretly a woman?

"How," I whispered, fearing the answer, "are you a Pretty Woman expert? How," I continued my voice calm as Hector Elizondo's character, Barney Thompson when Kit shows up in his hotel lobby, "could you have watched Pretty Woman more than I have?"

Then in happened. He got a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes and a slight little grin on his face as he sighed and said, "Julia Roberts's legs are 44 inches long from hip to toe. That's 88-inches of therapy wrapped around me for the bargain price of $3,000."

Ahhh ... there's my husband.