the movie you saw too young

A little fun.

I was born in the 1900s.

I follow lots of grew-up-in-the-80s/90s nostalgia accounts on Instagram because as much as I waaaaay prefer adulthood to childhood, I can’t resist stuff like this:

Iced tea.

We drank super sugary, Lipton powder iced tea from that orange thing. I mean nothing could beat that on a summer Wednesday afternoon after riding your BMX through a bunch of trails you were forbidden to follow because your mom heard “older kids” drank in those woods. Childhood bright spots were far from the eyes of adults. [An uncomfortable paradox considering how much time I spend with my kids — I started coaching 6th-grade hoops this week. Zak seems happy about it, but what if I find out later that I took that refuge away? Well, if it’s a risk, I’m obviously betting it’s a small one.]

One of the warmer features of 80s/90s nostalgia was how universal it felt. Diff’rent Strokes and Perfect Strangers. Not wearing helmets or seatbelts. [

PSA: romanticizing this is an invitation to have the rest of your takes heavily discounted. Our negligence was forgivable but it’s also dumb to think it was superior. I was in a bad car accident without a seatbelt AND got a concussion because I landed on my head after falling off my bike. I think these things happened in a 2-year period. Maybe I’d remember if I didn’t have a concussion. Fun fact. I’ve had 4 actually. None since I was 12. My parallel to this guy is weird. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe this is what happens when you GROW UP IN THE EIGHTIES! None of mine were from sports either.

While I’m on this Nate has this awesome 90-second bit about the people born between 1978-1980 specifically. It’s more profound than funny:

 

My favorite nostalgia trope is the “what movie did you watch that you were too young to see?”. I won’t turn this into a discussion about the difference between an “80s R-rating” and today, I’m sure there’s subreddit to to keep you occupied with that until Thanksgiving. I’ll just share my answers to that question:

Robocop

I haven’t seen it since I was 7. The early scene where the cop is shot to bits. The boardroom moment when the advanced model goes haywire. I can still remember where I was when I watched it…my living room on the Monday of a MLK or Presidents Day weekend when my dad was home during the day with us and rented it from the smelly VHS shop around the corner (this was pre-Blockbuster!). I think you could even rent the VCRs there.

Cujo

I saw this in my grandma’s living room in Brooklyn. Prolly similar age. It was on TV. They used to just play Stephen King movies on regular channels like it was the US Open. I had no fear of dogs until this lovely film put me on high alert. I got over it eventually but there was a German Shepherd in my neighborhood that changed all my walking routes like I was the kid in the Family Circus comic strips.

Poltergeist

Another one at grandma’s house. I made it to the tree scene. Haven’t slept since.

Honorable mentions:

• Neverending Story. Another f’d up dog. A flying mop from hell. I don’t even know, I think it might have been a good guy. Not in my eyes. Somebody shave and shrink that thing. Maybe it could make a normal face and not grin like molester (that’s kinda an eighties word now that I think of it)
• Ghostbusters. Low-key frightening. I didn’t need Gozer in elementary school. I really didn’t.

I may have mentioned it before, but it’s still funny to me — the first time I had a friend sleep over was in first grade and my mother rented us Terminator. The first one. Like the noir-chase movie. It’s not sci-fi. It’s straight-up horror. Arnold was Anton Chigurh — without the coin flips and with a steel exoskeleton.

That one didn’t traumatize me. I wrote about watching it with my sons last year when they were 7 and 10.

Maybe my mom was sent from the future to prepare me to prepare these boys for Skynet. That would make sense.

I wonder what the kid that slept over is up to now. His name was Michael Buckley. I’ll never find him with a name like that.