"You liked that movie, with the pregnant girl?"
"Sure, grandma. I did. I liked it."
"I think that's the wrong kind of movie to show young people. Every young person who sees that -- here's this girl, 16 years old, pregnant, and nobody raises a fuss, like it's an ordinary thing. She's never sick, no one cares, even her mother and father don't think anything of it. But that's not the way life is, or at least not how it used to be. Everyone frowns on someone being unmarried and pregnant, don't they still? But that's not how the movie is. And they call it a comedy, but I don't see anything funny in that. Is it the usual thing for a 16 year old girl to be walking around with a belly like that, and pregnant, where is the comedy?"
"Well, maybe the dialogue..."
"And then at the end she finds out she really likes that young fellow! First she didn't want anything to do with him and then she decides she really likes him, it didn't seem like it made any sense."
"Okay, so you didn't like Juno, but you liked The Great Debaters?"
"I did. Finally a movie I liked. I liked that a lot -- I liked it because there was a message there, it was something thoughtful. People trying to make themselves better and achieve something, there was a real story there. I don't if you'll like it -- compared to all this other stuff it's awfully sedate and ordinary -- but I really liked it. But in the pregnant one -- could you hear all of what they were saying?"
"I guess."
"Why does everyone in the movie talk like young people, very fast and very low. That's how young people talk -- and it wasn't only low to me. It's like the way [your cousin] talks, I never know what she is saying, I swear to you she talks like that, only in this movie they spoke even lower. But she was a beautiful girl, the one who was pregnant, she has a beautiful face. I must say that, she has a beautiful face. But she was non-caring. Like it was not a shameful thing, or even anything at all, like having a baby was just something to brush right off, like it was not a big deal or something that would affect her life."
"At least you liked one of the movies."
"Oh, of course. No, and the biggest disappointment wasn't even the movie. We went to the deli on Avenue U and let me tell you, I thought I'd treat myself and I got tongue, in a sandwich. [My two friends] each got corned beef, and even though the meat was like two inches high -- how anyone can eat so much meat in a sandwich I don't know -- they didn't like it. And my tongue, I said I want first cut, the leanest, and I didn't even recognize it as tongue. It was so mushy, I don't even know if I was even eating tongue, or if it was something else they put in the sandwich, I really don't know. And they used to have good coleslaw, but now they have big pieces of cabbage in it you have to chew instead of it all being the same size. And we shared a knish, and it was cold, everything was cold, nothing was warm, and they weren't even that busy. And the waitress they had -- she was an old lady, she could hardly even walk! She was sitting all the while she wasn't serving."
"How old was she?"
"Oh, she was probably about 65. Maybe she wasn't even that old, but she seemed very old. I'm disappointed by the food at that deli,I always thought their food was better than that, I felt like taking them on the side and saying 'what happened to your food?' But I didn't want to say anything and call them over and make a fuss, but, really, I know what tongue looks like, individual slices, but this was all jumbled up."
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