Me and the Big Screen Sierra Adams

“You’re not easy to figure out,” they say. I tell them I am the strength of Hancock, the wit of Tony Stark, the brain of Dr. Brown and the mystery of Anton Chigurh.

People find friends in novels, but I found myself in movies. Everything I do, am, or say, has been inherited from the big screen.

When my blood sugars are high, and I am throwing up profusely, Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze cure me with their esprit dancing. When my smile fades, Sean Maguire forces me to the ground with his humor. When the world kicks me down, Black Widow scolds me with her pursed lips as if I were letting down the entire female population and then inspires me to kill my demons. And when another young black man being shot by a tyrant officer pulls me to my African roots, I give my soul to the only movie that has ever made me cry: The Color Purple.

They were not just my exit from reality, they became my ipseity, my distinction.

I may not be predictable, but I can promise three things: When people meet me, I will make them offers they cannot refuse. When my own Johnny pops his head through the hole axed in the wall, I will either fight it like Rocky or run like Forest. And, most importantly, when I change the world, and they ask who it was,...