Walk

The Goldberg Family’s imposing silhouette filled the back row like a scrawny Russian doll set. The clan, which did everything together, was comprised of two girls, four boys, and two parents who had, on this occasion, unintentionally sat in decending height order. It was the Grand Oaks High School ’s 3rd Annual Film Festival and the theater/cafeteria was lined with two hundred twenty chairs sprinkled with about twenty two limp, nonGoldberg bodies.

It was Mrs. Melinda Goldberg’s clout in (and financial contribution to) the local Board of Education that was primarily responsible for the creation of this event, which just so happened to start the Freshman year of her aspiring filmmaker son Abe. Despite this fact, Abe’s film Walk only managed to win an honorary mention along with the other three films that earned no other distinction.

Tonights debut was not so much nerve-racking for Abe as annoying. His trophy-hoarding family lacked the capacity to understand how he had tried to get honorable mention – that he would have considered it a profound failure to receive a legitimate award at this joke-of-a-festival.

“Honorary Mention!” his mom had squealed upon the dinner-table announcement the week prior. The journey of her upper lip over those mother-of-pearl teeth that constituted her smile was an Olympic event she was proficient at – the unobservant recipient of which was left feeling thoroughly encouraged.

At five foot four, Abe was the shortest Goldberg which meant this night he was sitting by the aisle.

“It’s okay man,” his younger, taller brother Jake whispered to him “there’s always next…”

His words of encouragement were cut short by an uncontrolled burst of laughter elicited by the film currently showing which featured Mitch Perkins wearing a fat suit and fake side-burns.

After about 90 minutes of various other meditations on the general themes of fat-suits, fake facial hair, and air-soft guns, Walk made it’s debut.

For the next 15 minutes clip after clip showing random people crossing a crosswalk washed over a befuddled audience. All the footage was candid and each subject held in his or her hand a familiar red flag, which the city had put at every major intersection following a series of accidents. The only sound heard was that of a harmonica playing the same faint, lulling four notes over and over. The all-but-dead audience, desperately seeking stimulation, fluttered back to life during the clip of a guy with a mohawk who looked particularly silly carrying the flag across a road void of cars, only to sink back into discomfort and indifference. No credit sequence followed and the lights were immediately flipped on for the presentation of awards.