crazy 'til Labor Day

In Play It Again Sam, the film Woody Allen made before Annie Hall, he plays a character whose wife Nancy has just left him:

ALLAN:  Can't we discuss it?

NANCY:  We discussed it fifty times.

ALLAN:  Why?

NANCY:  I don't know.  I can't stand the marriage.  You're no fun, and I feel you suffocate me.  There's no rapport, and I don't dig you physically.
(she looks at his face)
For God's sake, Allan, don't take it personal.

==================
...Allan goes alone to see "Casablanca" and then walks home.  Trudging uphill (this movie happens in San Francisco, unlike most of his movies, which are NYC-based) -- he muses,

ALLAN:  If only I knew where my analyst was vacationing.

Where do they go every August? 
They leave the city. 
Every summer the city is full of people who are crazy till Labor Day.

=============================
Reading over that part where she tells him why she's leaving -- people always ask Why, and then the answer makes you feel bad -- ("For God's sake, don't take it personal!")
Reading over that part, & remembering the movie, I was thinking, Maybe everything anyone says at the end of a relationship should be taken with a grain of salt.

But then remembered a conversation (two conversations, actually) which I experienced, and then thought, Maybe everything anyone says at the end of a relationship -- AND at the BEGINNING of a relationship -- should be taken with a grain of salt....

--------------------- This guy told me he made a hundred thousand dollars a year.  I was impressed (I was pretty young) -- and was so impressed, felt compelled to repeat this to someone else....(what a doofus -- I wouldn't do that, now -- repeat it, I mean...)  but I did then, and the guy I told that to, a local person I'd known for a while, replied:  "Gotta make 20-thousand, before ya can make a hundred."

For a moment could not think what in the world he meant -- you think he doesn't even make 20?  Why would he say he makes a hundred, because that's a long way from...OOOOOooohh-h-hh.  ('Light dawns on Marblehead.'  One of those moments.)  You really think he would lie to me, in order to try to impress me?  Wow.

Grain of salt, man; grain of salt.

So if we need to take everything that is said at the end of a relationship, with a Grain of Salt, AND we should probably take everything that anyone says at the beginning of a relationship with a grain of salt, am starting to wonder about in between, and to foresee Salt Shortage. ...
(may we substitute sea salt?...)

-------------------------------- [Play it Again Sam]:

ALLAN (thinking to himself):  Why should a divorce bother me so?
Maybe I'm better off without her.

Why not?
I'm young, healthy, got a good job.
This could be my chance to step out a little bit.
If she can swing, so can I.
I could turn this place into a nightclub.
Get broads here, like you wouldn't believe.
Swingers, freaks,
nymphomaniacs --

dental hygienists....

I couldn't believe what she said when she left.

NANCY:  I want a new life.
I want to go skiing, go dancing,
go to the beach,
ride through Europe on a motorcycle.
All we ever do is see movies.
...You're one of life's great watchers.  I'm a doer.  I want to participate.  We never laugh together.

------------ His friends, a married couple, come over to see how he is, as soon as they find out Nancy left.  They ask why she left --

ALLAN:  She doesn't laugh enough.
Insufficient laughter -- grounds for divorce.
She wants to go skiing.
She wants to ski down a mountain laughing like an idiot.

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Pass the salt.

-30-