There is that saying that goes, “You don’t really know someone until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes.” A couple of weekends ago I think I walked a mile in my son’s shoes, at least when it comes to watching movies. He, like most people, enjoys movies. However, every now and then he gets a little perturbed when the facts of a movie don’t quite line up with reality. I’m not talking about fanciful stuff, like Indiana Jones surviving a leap from a plane with the assistance of an inflatable raft; Star Wars dogfights complete with sound, explosions and the appearance of gravity in the vacuum of space; or superheroes. He’s fine with all that, or will at least enjoy poking fun at things like sharks in a tornado. But don’t alter the storyline or characters of a book he’s read or video game he’s played, or change the geography of a real-life location he knows, such as placing a police station next to the mall when it’s really on the other side of town. In those instances he’ll be sure to let you know that that is unacceptable, sometimes getting so bothered it appears he’s about to blow a gasket. The same thing happened to me while watching a Hallmark movie. Yes, one of Deb’s and my favorite pastimes is watching movies shown on the Hallmark Channel. They are these cheesy romantic comedies that are very formulaic and tend to follow one of three or four plot arcs (i.e. boy and girl can’t stand each other, they must work together to accomplish some task and begin to have mutual feelings, there is a misunderstanding that threatens the relationship, couple realizes they really do love each other and reconcile). And if it’s a Christmas movie, the old guy is always Santa Claus, We like them because they are lighthearted, humorous, fun to watch and easy to follow because of the similar storylines. Sometimes, we even play a game where we try to guess what’s going to happen before it actually does. Career accuracy is not really important in Hallmark movies. The characters are doctors, nurses, farmers, hotel managers, business execs, radio personalities, psychiatrists, architects, interior decorators . . . you name it. However, what their jobs entail on the screen usually doesn’t relate very closely to the comparable career in real life. Once again, this usually doesn’t bother us because it is the relationship that is the real story, not how a person does their job. In fact, like my son with the shark in the tornado, it is sometimes fun to laugh at situations like the city socialite who just inherited a vineyard being able to harvest all the grapes before a big storm with only the help of the local diner patrons who are willing to lend a hand. It’s fun to laugh, that is until the career hits a little close to home and the representation is just a little too ridiculous. (Ridiculous, in this instance, is very subjective, as you will see.) I am a civil designer, a job which involves site planning and permitting. This particular Hallmark movie in question dealt with a new business/shopping complex that was being built in the heroine’s hometown. The heroine, who is an aspiring architect, must return home because her company is developing the shopping center and needs to convince one last hold out to sell their property. The problem is this: groundbreaking is in thirty days and the contested property is smack dab in the middle of the development. Hold the phone right there! Groundbreaking denotes the start of construction. Before construction begins, a site must be permitted. Part of acquiring a permit is proving ownership of the land being developed. There is no way this site was permitted as long as part of the land was still owned by someone other than the developer. But wait. It gets worse. When the main character meets with the property owner, she finds outs that unless the property is sold to the developer and included in the new shopping complex, the local Development Board will not approve the project. Once again, for groundbreaking to be scheduled permits would have had to have been issued and those permits would probably not have been issued without the Development Board first being satisfied. Finally, the property owner’s objection was not to development in general, but to the specific design of the new complex, as it did not retain the integrity and character of the existing pond. So, to satisfy the property owner, the heroine, who studied architecture, redesigns the site in one night and shows sketches and artists renderings to the property owner to get her approval and hopefully make the sale. There are a slew of problems with this. First of all, her background is architecture. Architects design the physical building, not the entire site layout. That is, in part, the civil engineer's job. From my experience, when an architect does offer a preliminary site plan it usually needs significant revising to meet code and site-specific requirements. Next, when her boss questions the amount of green space, the heroine assures him that the building square footage is the same in this new design as in the old. All she drew was artist renderings. Actual square footage cannot be determined from sketches and renderings. Actual plans would need to be drawn up. Still, her boss concedes and tasks her with having a proper set of plans put together. Redesigning the entire site would cause substantial delays and require a revision to the existing permit, delaying construction by several months, possibly a year. Such a delay might cause some potential tenants to cancel their agreements with the contractor and others to impose penalties due to the fact that hard, contracted opening dates could no longer be met. None of this, however, appears to be a concern to the architect’s boss, who, by the way, had actually convinced the property owner to sign before she saw this new concept. Oh, yeah, there was a romance going on throughout the movie as well, but who can even think about that in light of the travesty being made out of the whole site development process! Like I said before, such extreme creative license is a mainstay of Hallmark movies, and for the most part, we just accept it. Everyone knows that a napkin contract won’t usually stop a hostile corporate takeover, or that even the best interior designer can’t turn a run-down mansion into a fantasy castle with only $100 and a chest of her grandma’s keepsakes. So why is it acceptable in most cases, but not this one? Well...well…it just isn’t! It doesn’t require any explanation other than that. I say it’s unacceptable, so therefore it’s unacceptable. You’ll just have to deal with it. P.S. Pastor Matt, I think it’s time for that sermon on pride.