Shoreline, WA has a great library and is part of the King County Library system. One of the adventures that Torrie and I like to do is check out movies from the library…for free!!! We just request them and when they come in, they send us an e-mail. So over the last few months we've seen a number of movies.

After watching the A&E version of Pride & Prejudice one weekend (my copy, not the library's) Torrie decided to go on a British Victorian Novel Movie Rampage, also known by it's acronym, BVMPR. As we have gone through several of these, we have had the good ones (Wives & Daughters, pretty good) and some bad ones (Bleak House).

However, even more fascinating than the actual movies themselves, is what Torrie does during the movies.

She predicts what happens with such accuracy that I swear she must have seen them before, several times. Last night was a great example.


After watching the third period of the Pens beating the Red Wings, and the last two minutes of the Magic beating the Lakers (have to prove my masculinity) we began to watch the Masterpiece Theatre version of "The Secret Life of Mrs. Beeton". Unbeknowest to me, but Mrs. Beeton wrote a very famous cookbook in the mid-to-late 1800's and EVERYONE in England knows about her. Kind of like the Victorian version of Betty Crocker.

Anyway the movie was a semi-autobiographical story of her life, meeting her husband, writing the cookbook, two babies die, blah blah. (Warning. Spoiler Alert! If you or someone you know may have or potentially could contract BVMPR, you may not want to read any further.) With about a half hour left in the movie, Torrie turns to me and says:

Torrie: "This is boring, let's turn it off."
Logan: "Are you sure? The back of the movie says that she died very young because of a 'deep, dark secret'. Don't you want to find out what it is? The suspense is killing me?"
I said this in a half-joking manner, the same that I always have when talking about Jane Austin-type movies. As a man, I have to make fun of them, but deep down I usually like most of them. I also hate not knowing what happens in the end.

Torrie: "Meh, it's boring, and I bet her husband gave her some disease from that trashy girl in his wild pre-marriage days."
Logan: "Are you saying that he gave her syphilis or something? Where did you get that from? That prediction came out of nowhere."
Torrie: "That's exactly what I'm saying. Maybe that's why their first two kids died. Let's go clean the dishes."

We went to the dishes, while I went to wikipedia to see what really happened to Mrs. Beeton. And I quote:
The TV drama seemed to imply the speculation (put forth in Kathryn Hughes' biography) that Beeton suffered from syphilis contracted from her husband, and that this may possibly have led to her death and those of her two children, although there is no firm evidence for this speculation.

Are you kidding me??? How could Torrie have possibly known???