Hello. My Name is Inigo Montoya.

You killed my father.  Prepare to die.

If you've seen the movie, you were saying it aloud to yourself after you finished reading the title.  I know.  I get it.  Best movie ever. 

Amster and Elizibeth and Miss Texas and Mr. 9 and Mr. 7-and-his-BFF-and-that-Mom-and-Grandma and I went to the Fox Tucson Theater this afternoon to watch it on the big screen.  It was perfect. 

(Spoiler alert - if you don't know that I'm writing about Princess Bride, 

continue reading at your own risk.)

I was the only one who'd seen it before, but the line at the will-call was full of "Mawwiage..." and "to the pain" and Miracle Max.  The smiles were beatific.  No one was in a bad mood.  Even the kids stopped fussing. 

Robin Wright (Penn-then-not-Penn)'s first film role was perfectly cast; she is Buttercup incarnate. Billy Crystal and Carol Kane ran around my kitchen, Humperdink-ing for as long as my kids shared a roof. The movie was a constant presence in our lives.

Mandy Patinkin's Inigo is Gene Kelly with a dark side; he lived in my house in the form of a little boy with a gleam in his eye and love in his heart for many, many years.  Actually, as I think about it, he's still in there, and not buried too deep, either.  No one was ever chastised for using the plastic sword holding the burger together as an epee... not as long as Hello... my name is Inigo Montoya was included in the duel. 

This afternoon, leaving the loge, the boys tried valiantly to escape my pointed finger as I warned them to prepare to die.  I'm not sure that we were the best behaved patrons in the theater; I know we were among the ones having the most fun.  I didn't want it to end.  With the double enticement of a new car (a loaner) and gelato, Messers 7 and 9 condescended to drive with me.

As we waited for the freight train to meander across the intersection, the conversation continued. Is iocaine real?  (No) What does develop an immunity mean and should we, could we try it? (Uh... no) The sportsmanship of bopping an opponent with a boulder consumed us as we took the short cut across Orange Grove to Skyline.  Westley's piggy-back ride gave Mr. 7 the giggles, although we all agreed that it was a fairly uncomfortable piggy-back ride.  

At Frost, the best gelato in the world, we wondered how Fezzik got that big (he was born that way) and discussed how pay back is like revenge. Over a small, a medium, and a large, Mr. 9 told us that he'd recognized Westley at As you wish; Mr. 7 didn't know until the mask rolled off at the bottom of the hill.  There was no brotherly I knew before you knew; we were more invested in the nuance than in the nudging. Anyway, neither of them knew that Westley was the man on the rope... the very strong man on the rope, even without carrying three people, too.

It was that kind of afternoon, and Rob Reiner's opus brought us there.  And, it gets even better. 

As we pulled into his driveway, Mr. 7 asked, "Is there a book of Princess Bride?"  

I'm picking it up at Barnes and Noble right after dinner.  It will be in his hands tonight, for Mom to read aloud.... because that's the perfect ending to a perfect day.