I’ve known a few people going through terrible times in life. Sometimes they’ve been young, sometimes they’ve been old. Very rarely have they been on the cusp of a romance.

Generally speaking, there’s something about illness that doesn’t lend itself to the dramatic. I think mostly it’s exhaustion. Who has the energy for the “do they like me” and other extremes of emotions when basic surviving is at stake?

Which is why romance films centered around sick people makes me sick. It’s definitely a Hollywood disease to to give romance a disproportionate role in someone’s life. Romance, according to the movies, is the thing that brings you back to life, renews your energy, gives you faith in beauty again, gives you hope, a future, etc, etc, etc. Romance has a exalted status in our society, it’s the high ideal we believe worth striving for. A sense of togetherness and communion that we think can only be achieved by a successful romance. It’s what gives life meaning and purpose: to be loved extravagantly by one other human. But it’s missing the point, and it’s a horrible standard by which to measure your own life.

It’s an especially poor standard to give sick people. Sure, they may have a supportive family, a loving family, a mother that dotes, a sister that sacrifices, a brother that entertains, a father that carries them, but do they have a boyfriend/girlfriend? They’re probably missing out if they don’t. At least that’s what I’ve learned from terminally ill romances.

Deifying romance is dangerous under the best of circumstances. Pitting illness against romantic love is abhorrent. It’s bad enough to be sick, let alone having to feel like your life is missing yet another component because you’re not dateable or marriageable because of something you can’t control.

Sure, romances for the terminally ill sounds like a nice idea in theory, the fluffy notion that “love strikes at any time!” And the staunch romanticism of “everyone should be loved!” Both of which are true axioms, but their placement in these situations only serves to add glamor to love and to signify that without it, you’re, well, without love.

But this is far from reality in many situations. Truth is that there can be advantages to being sick. It brings those who were close in closer and those who only wanted to pretend intimacy to go away all together. It makes moments with those you love that much sweeter. And it may be surprising to discover how many people you can love when you’re not caught in a romance movie trope. Which is why this trope is so very harmful. Instead of applauding the myriad of non-sexual relationships in someone’s life, relationships that are sweetened by loss and adversity, it creates a situation that drives home the point that meaning and purpose and happiness in life can only be found in a romantic situation. Souring an already sour situation.

Being ill is not easy, it’s not nice, it’s not good. And it’s not a fairy tale that needs to be sold with romance to support life having meaning. People are so much more than their illness or their romantic relationships.

There’s a lot of negative things that have been said about so-called “nice guys”. And there’s been some assertions that nice guys don’t actually really exist at all. It’s just a ruse to lure women into a false sense of security. I have one thing to say to that, and honestly it probably helps support the assertion.

Bill Pullman.

Or should I say Jack?

Of all the celebrated lovers of the screen, few are more fondly regarded and longed for than Jack of While You Were Sleeping.

If you need an education in the psyche of romance, this movie hits a lot of the right notes. It destroys most female notions of “the perfect guy” and supplants it with the “right” guy.  Jack is nice. He’s responsible, he’s mature, he’s protective, he’s considerate, he’s quiet. And yet he’s never boring. I know, unfair comparison. Next to a comatose man anyone looks interesting.

Here’s the kicker. Did Lucy start out by falling in love with Jack? No. She thought she loved Peter. Boy, was she wrong. He looked like everything she wanted and she couldn’t have been luckier that he never noticed her at all.

This can happen in life all too frequently, to women AND men. You like what you like until you realize what you thought you liked isn’t anything like what you really like. Sometimes we want the ideal, not a person. It’s why so many “nice” people get missed.

Yes, Nice Guys. Some women don’t get it right off the bat. Some women think they like the shiny successful, super attractive, confident jerks. And some women…actually DO like these types (we’re weird that way, in that we’re all very different from each other).

But honestly, women are looking for Jacks. Someone who cares about them, listens to their dreams, walks them home across an icy sidewalk, protects them from “the lean”, and knows old fashioned methods for moving sofas (“push it really hard”).

In fact, the only downfall in the entire movie that Jack has, is not owning up to what he wants. He’s too nice. One of the fundamental problems with being nice is that you’re afraid to make waves, too afraid to brave disappointment. Niceness risks nothing. It settles.

So realize with Jack that sometimes it’s okay to say, “you suck”. Even if you’re not sure if it’s the person or the outfit that sucks.

I’ve only seen about a thousand romantic comedies in my life. It’s not all of them, but it’s a sizeable chunk out of the genre. And it’s certainly enough to know exactly how I’d want my life to be like a RomCom.

• I don’t need an Indie music montage.
• I don’t want to cry in front of strangers while declaring my love.
• I’m not interested in having a bitter sexually aggressive best friend or a quirky irresponsible little sister.
• I don’t have the nagging mother, the indulgent father, the pet cat, or the adorable vehicle (anymore).
• I don’t want the high paying job that requires seemingly minimal time at work and endless opportunities to go to black tie balls, meet wealthy bachelors, and engage in crazy shenanigans like tipping over a tower of champagne flutes.
• I have no plans to live in New York, L.A., or travel to some place exotic on a crazy whim using all the credit on my card.
• I won’t kid you that I don’t want the leading man. Let’s face it, if I had a meet-cute with [Insert your favorite leading man here]  I’d let that little story play out as far as it would go.

But what I DO resonate with is that apartment. That quirky, colorful, aged and worn but happy yellow patchwork apartment. And the giant wine glasses, and the seemingly endless supply of wine. Yeah. At the beginning of the movie when our heroine is puttering around her apartment all alone and we’re supposed to feel sorry for her, all I can think is how can she waste that amazing opportunity??

In an hour and a half she’s going to be selling it, moving in with some boy she kind of knows, but let’s face it, doesn’t really understand, and goodbye apartment, goodbye solo wine drinking, late nights watching A Roman Holiday and eating lasagna in bed.

The next time we see her she’s going to be playing a dramatic lead in some film about the complexities and perils of married life and how difficult it is (think Kate Winslet from The Holiday to Revolutionary Road). She has absolutely no idea how good she has it at this exact moment. Her clothes thrown about the place, and the apartment being so much of her own identity that the second the audience sees it they know who she is. And here comes this guy and sure, he’s suave and attractive, and charming, and adorable. And he’s probably an architect. Or he makes furniture. Or he’s a puppy doctor. But isn’t he mostly just hair gel and a smile in a pastel blue sweater and well fitting jeans?

So anyway, my point is, the real romance of rom-coms is the single life that’s unappreciated. Take time, my friends, to appreciate puttering and lazing, dance parties for one, drinking wine in the tub, and the occasional late-night impulse decision.

Seize the quirky solo nights my friends, while you’ve got them.

Last night I was watching in a black hole of youtube clips and I came across the clip from the first Crocodile Dundee (because we needed more than one of these) movie where Dundee thwarts a mugger. The famous “that’s a knife” scene.

If you’re unfamiliar, Crocodile Dundee is a fish out of water movie where an Australian more comfortable in the Outback comes to New York because of a beautiful New York reporter and has no trouble adapting to the big harsh city because his knife is bigger than yours. The scene starts with our New York heroine being terrified, and our hero being surprised by the mugger, but in an amused way, like how you respond when your drunk friend starts singing in public.

Despite Sue, our heroine being terrified, she keeps her wits, “Give him your wallet, Mick.”

“What for?”

“He’s got a knife.” She says with growing terror.

“That’s not a knife.” Mick says, scoffing at our mugger — TO HIS FACE. He then pulls his own knife out of a sheath strapped to his back and branishes it in front of the mugger’s face. “That’s a knife,” he says.

He slashes up the mugger’s horrifically vinyl? pleather? jacket.  The mugger runs, presumably just embarrassed to be exposed as someone with awful taste in jacket quality.

Mick turns to Sue, and says, “just kids having fun. You all right?”

She swoons, if not physically then verbally when she utters, “I’m always alright when I’m with you, Dundee.”

It’s a gem of an 80s scene: total camp and silliness. If I had left it at just that, it’s all it would remain. Alas. I love reading youtube comments, it’s such a fascinating look at people that share your same viewing habits, and this was no exception. The one comment that really caught my eye was from someone asserting that “women love guys with big knives”.

Naturally, I blushed at his (clearly a man wrote it) assessment of women. It was so obvious that Sue got all hot and bothered because Mick had a big knife, and as all women know, the bigger the knife wielded, the bigger the penis of the knife holder, and really that’s all women are impressed by.

Oh sigh.

Trouble is, I do like the scene though. And I do think of Mick Dundee as being very manly. Am I really sure that it’s not his knife euphemism that’s the draw? But the more I thought about it, because honestly when you’re just watching youtube videos until 1 am your mind really wanders, I reckoned there was a completely different, more compelling element at play.

It’s the “no worries” of it all. Mick’s a master of de-escalation. There’s nothing more comforting than being around someone who’s not bothered. This is an amazing quality that gives Mick a distinctly reassuring vibe. Everywhere he goes he’s interested in having people chill out. Even animals blocking the entire road just fall to the ground sedated. It’s such a refreshing change from the manic American approach to masculinity which seems to be centered around who has the most intense gun collection and who can get into a fistfight first.

But this is always the trick, confidence sits back and waits, it doesn’t feel the need to rush to action. Confidence sits and listens and then reacts.

The truth is that confidence in a man or a woman is incredibly sexy because it’s calm, focused, interested but not combative.

Confidence means you have a knife strapped to your back because you recognize a knife as a useful tool, not because you need a way to protect women on a New York street.

Confidence  also means, apparently wearing a crocodile vest in public. I don’t understand the full rules of confidence myself, and I’m definitely not at that advanced 80s level.

Or hey, maybe it is about the knife. Maybe it’s just really cool to see an Australian in crocodile boots pull a giant knife out of a special knife sheath on his back (that I didn’t even know was a real thing until this movie), and it’s the movies, and knives and Australians are cool. Maybe it’s that. Who knows?

I’m not a sports person. I don’t play them, I don’t watch them, I don’t understand what the big deal is. Except for one sport and one team.

When you grow up the daughter of a Cubs’ fan, in a long line of Cubs’ fans, you are a Cubs’ fan. My great-grandmother memorized and recited Cubs’ player stats to my Dad. His enthusiasm for the team led him to ditch school and bum enough money to catch a ride on the “L” downtown to the game where he’d get a hot dog and peanuts and hang out for an afternoon. He raised me on stories of Ernie Banks. And when I got old enough, he’d take me and my sister out of school for Cubs games too.

Sanctioned school skipping is a guaranteed way to become a fan for life. But if that wasn’t enough, I’ll never forget the first time I saw Wrigley Field. You come out of the tunnels, up on to the field and there it is all laid out before you, and I’d never seen anything more beautiful in my life. I loved the spring days we’d spend there. Shivering in the nosebleed section, peeling peanuts with icicle fingers. I love the sunny afternoons in the bleachers, sweating in the sun and watching for fly balls.

I haven’t been a good fan over the years, haven’t stuck with the sport enough to know what’s going on. I shared my dad’s paranoia that the more invested you got the more you doomed them to failure. I loved them from afar.

But there is something to being a Cubs’ fan in a line of Cubs’ fans that sinks in to your life, even day to day.

“Next year.”

Cubs’ fans have hope like you can’t explain. Some years the disappointment almost chokes them when they say it. But they believe “next year” just might be the year. I’ve heard my Dad call them “bums” and every other old-timey insult under the sun, but even though they’ve lost all of his 60+ years on earth, there is a glint in his eye, and an excited tapping of his foot when he says “next year.”

Despite over a hundred years of losing, Cubs’ fans have hope. It’s not romantic, it’s not cynical, it’s just hope. It’s a simple, clean expression of their love. These fans are patient, they are long-suffering, they are eternally hopeful, and impossibly loyal.

I’ve never been embarrassed about being a Cubs’ fan, or being related to a fanatical Cubs’ fan. It’s a badge of honor believing in the unbelievable and hoping for the impossible. I’ve always been proud that my Dad rooted for the ultimate underdogs. I’ve been proud of that legacy he gave me.

And for once in my life the Cubs winning the World Series on November 3, 2016 is the one and only time I can truly understand what the big deal is.

This was the “next year”.