Have you seen this movie?  I only ask because I just saw it this week-end.  And it’s my worst nightmare come true. 

In this movie, the girl’s parents are taken by Serbian revolutionaries.  Blah, blah, blah – the details aren’t important; What’s important is that in order to save them, she has to do…MATH!

Are you FREAKIN’ kidding me?!?!  To have to SAVE people you LOVE using MATH???  Like I said: Worst.  Nightmare. 

After her ex-CIA agent father has been strung up and chained to a pipe in a basement somewhere in Istanbul, he places a call to the girl (where she’s hiding in a closet) from his impossibly-tiny-phone-hidden-in-a-boot.

He tells her to get out a map.  And then instructs her on how to jerry-rig a protractor out of a shoelace and a sharpie.  Whaaaat?  What the hell?!?

But it doesn’t stop there.  She then has to protract the HECK out of the map, measuring the shoelace to varying lengths and creating Venn diagrams.  This part might SEEM like total bs, but actually, Venn diagrams are pretty fun.  Venn there, done that.  Hee hee hee.

At some point she has to tell direction.  In Istanbul.  From a hotel room window.  Yeah, right.  I’m pretty sure my trick of holding up my thumb and forefinger to see which hand spells the letter “L” is not going to tell me which way EAST is.  In Istanbul.  From a hotel room window.

Because once she figures out which way EAST is, she has to then throw a grenade on the rooftop that’s east of the hotel. 

Ok.  Now THROWING?  Come on.  If I had to throw a live grenade – (“Let me hear you count to three before you do it, Sweetheart,” says the disembodied dad-voice on the other end of the line) Counting?  You’re really adding COUNTING to the mix?!? – that would pretty much be the end of the conversation right there.  Because I’d get so wild with my throw that instead of sailing out of the open balcony door, the grenade would hit the door jamb and ricochet back into the room.  For those who have seen me throw-like-a-girl, this is a distinct possibility.   

So.  Given all of this, Mom & Dad, please, please, please don’t get kidnapped in Istanbul.  Because if I then had to save you using protractors, directional cues and throwing?  (Oh, and let’s not forget counting.  But WHY counting??  That’s just rubbing it in.)  I don’t think I’d be able to do it.  Not that I wouldn’t WANT to.  I just literally COULDN’T. 

In which case the phone call from the tiny, boot-phone would go WAY differently than it did in the movie, “Oh, hi, Dad.  Thanks for calling.  Hi to Mom too.  Love you both!  But we should probably just say good-bye now.”