As I’m sure is the case in every family, the Kosiors have a few made-up words and phrases that are distinctly our own. We use “comfty,” for example, to describe an item that is super-duper extremely comfortable. We use “pooky” when something is not scary to the general populace but scary to the speaker as an individual. And we use “kissing movie” to identify forms of entertainment in which the purpose of the storyline is to end in a kiss. Hallmark movies are kissing movies. Snow White is a kissing movie. Die Hard is also a kissing movie. The “kissing movie” identifier exists in our house because I love them, and my boys avoid them like the plague.
As the Wendy of our Neverland island, there are a lot of things that I love alone, although my gents do their best to be supportive. When we were in Washington, D.C., for instance, they honorably sucked it up and spent 30 minutes in an exhibition of the Hope Diamond because “someone should probably go with Mom.”
However, since the thing I love most is my fellas, I tend to eschew Hope Diamonding for trips to museums dedicated to farts and restaurants where you get to shoot dinner plates out of t-shirt guns. Kissing movies, however, are my Achilles’ heel.
Throwing (or maybe dinner plate gunning) back to our trip to Washington, D.C., our entry tickets into Mount Vernon included free passes to the movie Young Washington. The boys were thrilled. Kyle was thrilled. And I was indifferent, as I had never heard of Young Washington because “Moms who own more than a normal number of items of clothing with ruffles and can’t name more than ten wartime battles” were probably not the target audience for Young Washington’s advertising campaign.
Naturally, with three out of the four people thrilled, we went to the movie as soon as we could. During the Battle of the Monongahela, George Washington managed a John Wick-esque escapade through seemingly certain death, having two horses shot out from under him and several bullets passing through his coat and hat without wounding him. The movie opened with a sneak peek into this battle, and Eleven was so excited by the chaos, explosions, and scalping that he ended the opener sitting up on his knees on the chair.
“This is the best movie I’ve ever seen,” he whispered to me.
“Are you sure?” I whispered back.
(P.S., the movie was pretty good.)
Young Washington was distributed by a company called Angel Studios. The minute we left the theater, I started getting pushed social media ads by Angel. The first three were for other wartime movies and the next three were for Young Washington again. After I scrolled right past all six of their ads, Angel Studios tried a different tack – with a short clip from a miniseries of two good-looking people in Regency era clothes (you know, like Pride & Prejudice) doing Regency era things like yearning for each other and speaking in English accents. The clip described the show as “a retelling of Beauty and the Beast” – and, like Beauty and the Beast, it was obviously a kissing movie. I watched that clip twice.
I work in marketing and know a lot about social media advertising and so I knew better than to watch that ad twice. But, I did; sending out a giant, flashing, honking horn of a signal that said, “HEY THIS LADY LIKED THIS.” For the next week, everything I opened, from YouTube to my local newspaper to TikTok, pushed me more and more and more clips of the miniseries, called Seeking Persephone.
And because, like I said, they were attractive people doing things like touching each other’s hands (SHOCKING) and falling off of horses (ALSO SHOCKING) and almost kissing (there you go), I watched them every single time.
“I’d like to see Seeking Persephone,” I said to Kyle as he futzed around with the lawn mower. “It’s streaming.”
“Sure, what is that?” he asked, not looking up from his tools.
“It’s a kissing movie,” I told him.
He started to sigh, caught himself, and then went back to his mower.
“Okay,” he said.
“You don’t have to watch it with me,” I said.
“I will,” he said after a long time.
“You don’t have to watch it with me,” I repeated. “But I’m warning you that I’m going to see it.”
“Okay,” he said.
On Sunday night, the boys were off doing whatever and Kyle was sprawled out on the couch scrolling his phone.
“I’m going to turn on Seeking Persephone,” I said.
Kyle paled slightly, and then recovered.
“Okay,” he said.
I clicked buttons until the miniseries title screen came up and the preview played. Kyle sat through it in silence, and then stood up.
“Well, I half-died from boredom during that preview so I’ll save myself from full death and go outside,” he said.
“Farewell, good sir,” I said in my best(?) British accent.
“Okay,” he said, and left.
Near the start of the first episode, when one of the characters pulls a sword partially out of a scabbard, Fifteen appeared behind the couch.
“What’s this?” he said.
The camera pulled back to reveal a wedding.
“Nope,” Fifteen said, exiting the room.
I watched the first episode, and then decided I’d better start the second. Eleven appeared in the doorway.
“Can you hand me a protein bar?” he called to me. “I don’t want to come in there.”
I finished the second episode and gave a good start to the third before realizing I was beyond late for bed. I begrudgingly turned off the TV.
“How was it?” Kyle asked when I got upstairs. “Lots of kissing?”
“Lots,” I told him. “My kind of action movie.”
I took a picture of myself watching Seeking Persephone as proof of life to Kyle because I had been downstairs in the living room so long. It’s above.
This week on North Dakota Today we talked about Marilyn McGinley, my Nice Person of the Week, as well as a vault competition in downtown Grand Forks. (Valley News Live)
It’s fair time! Everyone loves the fair! That’s probably why there’s record demand for the North Dakota State Fair this year. (KX Net)
Almont’s Sidney Schau is proof that hard work and a bucket of apples is a recipe for success. (Valley News Live)
In North Dakota-adjacent news, Hallock’s Megan Sugden has gone viral after sharing her family’s home videos. (Grand Forks Herald)
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