Raiders of the Lost Ark (part 2)

NOTE: The following is a work in progress. The entry here will be lengthened as writing continues. This is, as yet, unedited. Any comments and/or suggestions are welcome. Right now, I'm trying to get down all the details and see if this ends up going anywhere.

The flyer was otherwise vague on details, offering only a brief, inexplicable summary and tantalizing lines like this: “Raiders contains romantic interludes, dangerous liaisons and terrifying chases—high action elements that leave audiences on the edge of their seats.” In 2011, such descriptions seem sweetly innocent, almost naïve, but in 1981, coupled with promo photos and the now-iconic font of the film’s title, they seemed revelatory.

“OPENS THEATRES EVERYWHERE JUNE 12, 1981,” the flyer promised, and I believed.

As spring progressed, and the end of school approached, news came of another, slightly less exciting, event: my aunt and uncle were planning a summer road trip, and would be staying with our family for a number of days in early June. Accompanying them would be my aunt’s younger sister, Star, who was situated in age between me and my brother. What this basically meant to me was that I would soon be subjected to another ongoing round of my uncle’s puns involving the hateful coincidence of an advertising campaign featuring a tuna fish with my name and the brand name of a canned tuna that the fish promoted, seemingly unconcerned with the implications of his advertising a product made from the flesh of his own species. “Sorry, Charlie,” I could hear my uncle leer. “Star-Kist. Get it?” he said as his mouth widened into an obnoxious grin. “Star kissed?” I wanted to beat him.

An additional cause for annoyance was Star’s tendency to act older than she was, and her willingness to mingle with adults and join in their conversations. This struck me as not only highly pretentious (though I did not know what that word meant at the time), but as needlessly provocative, as if Star wanted to show us how much she deserved to join the company of adults, while lesser mortals were corralled in the rumpus room. She was, in short, snotty, and this provoked in me an irresistible urge to mock her at every turn (though never in the presence of the adults whose company she so craved). I simply could not fathom the idea of wanting to spend more time than was necessary with adults and their dreary conversations about money, or liquor, or sports, or unfunny jokes. Why, I wondered, would one not prefer the privacy of one’s own bedroom, where the drone of adult conversation could be drowned out by turning up the volume of one’s cassette recording of “Weird Al” Yankovic? (My attitude in this regard has not changed much in the last 30 years.)

Star, we learned, would be bringing a friend along on the road trip. This information I processed with a shrug, though if it had come only a year later, I would have experienced near-fatal paralysis at the prospect of an unknown girl spending a week in my house. And I had larger concerns—namely, how many days remained before I could go see Raiders of the Lost Ark. These otherwise meaningless days were filled by such activities as reading Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels, watching movies that were neither well-promoted nor mysterious (like Flash Gordon), and going to the mall, which, according to the diary I kept, was “full of chicks.” Though I felt life was largely pointless until I could see Raiders of the Lost Ark, it did serve the arguably valuable purpose of allowing me time to further establish for all the world to see that I was a highly credentialed and hopelessly doomed nerd. (Tarzan novels. Seriously.)

In the early days of June, my uncle, aunt, and grandmother arrived, along with Star and her friend, Jamal. Jamal seemed to me a peculiarly exotic name for a girl, and in my later years (post-Cosby Show, that is) would seem even more peculiar. Though I never thought to ask the origins of her name, I suppose it might have had something to do with her own origins as a girl born in the early 1970’s to parents residing in Northern California. Jamal was short, blonde, and situated somewhere in that awkward phase between “spunky” and “sassy.” I am pretty sure she had not yet reached puberty, because there is no mention in my diary of her breasts.

I had not seen Star for a year or two, but, though initially shy and reserved, she didn’t seem much different. As someone who was just beginning to sense the social ostracization that accompanied higher-than-average intelligence (remember: I was reading Tarzan novels), I recognized in her a kind of kindred spirit, though, as the daughter, sister, and sister-in-law of professional educators, Star was probably far less ostracized—at least at home—than I was. This in no way prevented the deployment of my scorn, though this was done as subtly as possible, or as subtly as possible for a 13-year old nerd who enjoyed listening to Dr. Demento.