We are not unique.

I have just discovered that my family's cult movie is also someone else's cult movie. This is very hard to believe.

I've been reading a memoir (you will laugh when you learn that it's called Truck: A Love Story) by Michael Perry, about his life in a small Wisconsin town, the rebuilding of a '51 International pickup, planting a vegetable garden, going on book tours, and his budding relationship with a woman he meets at a book signing. On their second date, they watch a movie at Anneliese's house, and afterward spend some time chatting about movies they both like, pleased to find their taste is similar.

"Then she says she and her sisters and her mother can recite every line in What's Up, Doc?..."

I had to check to make sure that I wasn't actually related to this woman! Someone else in the world has A), HEARD of this movie, 2), recognized its brilliance, and D), watched it so many times that it is engraved into their brains forever. Yikes.

As far as the rest of the book goes, I enjoyed it enough to request his other two memoirs at the library, although his tone is a little too "Look how witty, interesting, and liberal I am despite living in Hot-Dish Ville" for my taste. Though I didn't totally understand all the details of rebuilding the pickup, neither did he, but it was fun anyway. And I liked his descriptions of planning, starting, planting, and harvesting a garden (currently being deep in that activity myself), as well as his cooking adventures. He sounds like a neat guy, if overly inclined to convince you of that fact, and I wouldn't mind attending one of the firemen's BBQs to shoot the breeze with him and his friends.