Dear John, Here's What I Really Wanted to Say

I have never been a fan of those tragic love story movies that featured young and heartbroken protagonists. They're usually subjected to so much heartache and heavy life-changing decision that it almost borders on child abuse. I call it the Nicholas Sparks genre.

I think it all started with A Walk to Remember starring Mandy Moore. I've never seen it and I don't intend to, ever. They say Mandy dies in the movie, and based on the rest of what people have told me, it's a ripoff of the classic Love Story.

There were so many more that followed, like The Notebook and The Last Song. All of them I haven't seen. Recently a friend wanted me to see this latest snoozefest called Dear John. "Why should I watch it?" "Amanda Seyfried sang a beautiful song in the middle of the movie." "Maybe it's more practical to just watch the song on YouTube?" "No, you have to see the whole movie to get the song."

I highly doubted his advice, but what the hell. Maybe in the future I will be asked some trivia question worth 1 million dollars and it would be about this movie. I don't want to regret this someday; that I had the chance to watch it and I didn't. The fact that this friend is a straight guy made me doubt his sexuality too.

So there's this soldier named John (duh) and this girl named Savannah. Yeah, who names their daughter Savannah? They get their freak on for two weeks then John leaves again to fight somewhere. Actually, they never got their freak on. They just talked about the moon, and coins, and autism. Frenzied letter writing follows between our main characters. They tell each other the "story" behind their respective shits for a year. A year. Then John gets a two-day break after 9/11 so naturally he goes and spends it with Savannah. And still they talked and talked and talked. They even argued.

And finally, they get their freak on.

I mean, who spends two weeks with a hot surfer dude who is also a soldier and can probably kill you with his bare hands (I said that to emphasize further the testosterone factor), and just talk about the moon and lie on the beach? To cut the story short they break up through a letter and they didn't end up together yada yada yada blah blah.

The best part of a summer fling is the knowledge that you will, come the end of summer, never see each other again. That sucks, yes, but it also makes the fling more intense. It's like condensing a year's worth of dating into 8 weeks or less. Logic dictates that if you don't have that much time you won't spend it arguing or discussing whatever profundity. You do that in normal relationships.

Besides, would you argue with this? Dear John, you should have taken off your shirt more. People wouldn't have been as bored.