Spice Boy

I lied to my mom for the first time when I was 11. I told her I was going to my friend Sean's house. I picked Sean because our moms weren't friends, so I knew she wouldn't have any follow-up questions. But I didn't go to Sean's house. I went to the bus stop on this dreary January afternoon of 1998. I had some money from Christmas, I think like $25 or something (a fortune to a wee me at 11), which was more than enough to get me into the Canyon Meadows Cinema, the cheap cinema that played movies 2 months after their initial release for half price. With a half-price ticket, I had enough left over for popcorn, at least I would if I didn't already spend it on Aqua's Aquarium CD, still one of the best purchases of life up there with my waffle maker, which, for the record, is worth the mess. 

I didn't tell anyone where I was going. I simply couldn't trust anyone with this activity. I sat down in theatre number 1 at around 1:30 pm. The theatre was mostly empty. There were a few other people in there, but thankfully, no one I recognised. But wait, who's that? Those are the sisters and their mom who live down the block. I recognise them! But no fear of them saying anything, they're in different grades, and I don't even know their names. But they could point at me in the halls and say something. Best to keep a low profile. I sit in the back, jacket hood up. I'm invisible. I am a wraith in the dark wind. Dark Wind. Cool name, maybe I can go by that. I'll try to get that going.

The film starts, I can put the hood down now. Then Scary Spice's silhouette took up the screen, and puberty hit me right there like a truck. I could feel my balls drop. But this movie is more than a bunch of pop stars cashing in. I mean it is a bunch of pop stars cashing in, but it leans into cartoon logic and has influenced how I still want to make movies today. 

I had to keep my love of the Spice Girls a secret as an 11-year-old boy in Calgary in 1998. Every time I was on the school bus and Power 107 blasted Spice Up Your Life into the cheese wagon, I had to sit there and pretend not to know the words lest Matt the dick in grade 8 beat my little ass. Stop would come on, and I had to hold in the dance. Do you know how hard that is to do now, let alone in 1998? I knew the moves. But I also wanted to fit in. I know that much of the media I consumed would repeat the mantra of “be yourself” every episode, but I also lived in the real world. I knew that the cost of outing myself as a Spice Boy would be the end of my social life, and the price is too high. And I'm a coward. What would I really gain from that? Would I inspire another boy to say the same, and we'd be friends? I don't want to be friends with a weird little boy like me; I'm insufferable. Would the girls be my friends now? They bullied me incessantly, and this would just give me more verbal artillery for them to launch at me like I'm a small Cold War-era country with socialist ideals. 

I knew I couldn't tell anyone that I went to go see Spice World. I had no one to talk about it with. The memory of watching Posh Spice in a camo mini skirt and heels walking by the army challenge is burned into my brain. Baby Spice on a swing inside that impossibly large bus interior made me feel like I was welcomed into their world. It's the kind of film that made me think beyond demographics. This movie wasn't made for me, an 11-year-old boy in Calgary, but it was made for me, Andrew. I still haven't become their new sixth member, Snowy Spice, but if the girls can overcome the pressure of fame without losing their bond of friendship while driving a double-decker bus through London and jumping the gap in Tower Bridge, then I can get out of bed today. And I want to make films that will inspire someone who is braver than I am to do more than I ever could.