Cut from "I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You"

With my parents’ section almost finished, I had moved on to the footage of Harold and Rosie. I put my headphones on and pressed the black arrow in the center of my computer, and the frozen frame of Harold’s kitchen came to life.

            “Is there anything you’d want to change about her?” asked my voice. On screen, Harold shifted uncomfortably in a wooden chair, and Rosie started to laugh.

            “He’d like me to lose two stone, I think!”

            Harold blushed. “No, no,” he said. “Nothing.”

            “Oh, come on!” said Rosie, flicking him with a hand towel that had been sitting in the middle of the table. “I know there’s stuff! He wants me to be blond, maybe?”

            She placed her hands under the clouds of her pitch black, curly hair and struck a pin-up pose. 

            “And definitely, two stone.”

            “You’re going to get me in trouble, mister,” said Harold. “I’ll never hear the end of it.”

            “Oh, I’ll have a go at it then,” said Rosie, “If you’re going to be a coward. My Harold has horrid feet! I’m sorry love, but you do! They’re flat and long and his toe, that one there, it stretches out past his big toe!”

            “In many cultures, that’s a sign of wisdom.”

            “It’s a sign of ugly feet in mine!” said Rosie, stretching out her legs. “I’ve got lovely feet myself, lovely plump toesies with a nice, firm arch.”

            “That’s true,” said Harold, touching her sweater. “She has a lovely arch.”

            I put the film on pause, and cut back to the edited version of the film I’d done of my parents. I fast-forwarded seventeen minutes in.