Like If You Described the Bible as a Story About Some Guys Who Travel Around and Talk To Each Other

"Like the Princess Bride?" I said, raising an eyebrow.

"I haven't seen it," he said.

Silence on my end.

"WHAT?"

"What?"

"You haven't seen THE PRINCESS BRIDE?"

"What about ME would imply that that is a movie that I would want to see?"

I looked at the angry, smartass engineer across from me at the table at lunch. He enjoyed all the same webcomics I did, and we even had the same phone. Sure, he tended more heavily to straight up sarcasm than I did, me preferring to stay on the side of snark, but there was no reason that he would NOT like The Princess Bride. Wait.

"Do you KNOW anything about the movie?"

"I know it's about a girl who falls in love with a guy who goes away and becomes a pirate, or something, and then she thinks he's dead and marries someone else, but he comes back for her. And there's a guy with six fingers."

A little part of my soul died, but I was relieved.

"Okay. I see the problem. Hmmm. Okay, you've seen The Big Lebowski, right?"

"Of COURSE I've seen The Big Lebowski!"

I held up my hands in a placating gesture. "Okay, okay. Just checking. Okay. Describing The Princess Bride as a movie about a girl and a guy who becomes a pirate, and there's a guy with six fingers on one hand, is like describing the plot of The Big Lebowski as a movie about a guy who gets his rug peed on by a low-class criminal and gets involved with a rich guy and his weird ex-wife. It's technically TRUE, but the movie is about so much more than that. It's the environment that's created, and the quotes, and the interaction between the characters. It's not about the plot. The Princess Bride is the same way."

He stared at me.

"Okay. Maybe I'll check it out."

"Okay."