What a nice present! Did your daughter know you'd kept the New Yorker with the short story on your bedside table for all those years?
Yes, she was aware and I had lent it to her because she was interested in reading the story. That was an eventful year for her, her senior year in high school. She was sweet on a boy in her class and he told her he was gay. After initially being heartbroken, she became friends with him and started a diversity club at the school. It was a very conservative school and parents objected but she stood up for it, called a schoolwide meeting which I attended. One of the teachers read some of the hate mail he'd gotten. She received an award at the end of the year as an outstanding leader.
But the reason she was interested in the movie was that she read an article in, I think, the
New York Times, about how the movie was actually changing the perception of gay people in America. My daughter was actually quite progressive before she got married.
Oh, and Chuck, remember that trailer about the British man who suddenly decided he wanted to swim the English Channel, and how upset his wife was about it? I never want to see that trailer again for the rest of my life! I had that thing memorized!!
