Elbow room...

There's this scene in the movie, "The Wedding Singer" where Drew Barrymore tells  Adam Sandler specifically that she hates sitting in the aisle seat on a plane, because her elbow always gets smashed by the drink cart each time it passes.

Later on in the movie, her boyfriend at the time, Gary Sinise, has proposed to her, and they're on a flight to Vegas for a quickie wedding.  Drew Barrymore has the aisle seat, and she asks Gary if they can switch, so that she can save her elbows.  "Plus," she says, "I've never seen the bright lights of Vegas before."

Gary Sinise says, "No, I want to stay where I am.  How about I just let you lean over my lap so you can see out the window while we land?"  Drew agrees to this, and at that exact moment, the flight attendant rolls by her seat with the drink cart and slams into her elbow.

The look on her face changes then, because a lightbulb goes on in her head, and she realizes that Gary is not the man for her.  It's a small act, this refusal to move, and by itself it looks like nothing.  But taken in their relationship as a whole, it speaks volumes.  There were many other signs throughout the movie that he was a self-absorbed jerk, and as you're watching it, you almost want to scream out to Drew, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH HIM?  HE DOESN'T DESERVE YOU. DON'T YOU KNOW YOU ARE IN LOVE WITH ADAM SANDLER ANYWAY???????'

But she doesn't.  She's not ready to admit it, and it takes a pretty hard smack in the elbow to bring her to her senses.

Sometimes it's the little things that matter most, because small compromises show a willingness to try and put another's needs before your own, just as a lack of compromise shows that you are more likely to contnually put your own needs first..

I have had my share of "elbow room" moments over the years.  Probably the worst was at 3 am when I stumbled out of bed to try to get to the bathroom while my ex was visiting.  My armbraces were in the other room, so I asked him if he would retrieve them for me.  "No, I'm too tired.  Do it yourself, " he said.  "Do it myself, "I did.  I crawled to the bathroom from the bedroom, did my business, got back down on the floor, and crawled to the living room to bring my armbraces back to bed.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, my face, if I had a mirror, probably looked something like Drew Barrymore's on the plane in The Wedding Singer.  By itself, this small act wasn't much.  He was tired... and very hung over... so I wanted to cut him some slack.  But then I realized, drunk or sober, awake or half-asleep, things like that happened all the time.  It just took me writhing down the hallway in my jammies at 3 am to realize it.

Little things may be little, but sometimes the littlest actions convey a much bigger meaning.