Taking My Kids to see Back To The Future was like Going Back in Time

I’m trying not to be one of those “back in my day” dads, but sometimes the differences are so stark I can’t help myself. Except this “back in my day” was sharing one of my favorite movies with my kids.

My kids are rapidly changing from little kids to big kids/teenagers. They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, and this is as true for parenting kids as it is for anything else.

Having been a dysfunctionally functional alcoholic parent for the first 8 years of their lives, it’s been difficult not to lament those years I stumbled my way through. I tell myself that parenting young kids is a blur anyway, and that it would have been some kind of excrement show if I had been drinking or not.

Still, I’m trying to make the most of the time I have with them now. I miss the days when they wanted to play with me or snuggle on the couch, but those are being replaced by movie nights and going to new places together.

Over the weekend, I asked them to go with me to watch Back To The Future, which was re-released in theaters to celebrate its 40th anniversary. It was surreal to watch one of my all-time favorite movies with my kids, especially in a theater, the way it would have been 40 years ago.

And, I have to say, it holds up pretty well. Of course, I’m less than objective, but the story is almost flawless, and the movie has a great soundtrack. Watching my kids get sweaty palms when Doc Brown is trying to send Marty back to 1985 was pure joy. Real movie magic, if you ask me.

It rattles me to my core to realize that if the movie were made today, Marty would travel back to 1995 instead of 1955. Imagine Marty going back in time and hearing Gangsta’s Paradise, and Doc driving a 1995 Ford Taurus.

Maybe Marty plays Green Day’s Basket Case at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance instead of Johnny B. Goode. He probably still riffs Van Halen-style, though. Let’s not get carried away.

Back To The Future was the start of my fascination with time. Aside from time traveling in an awesome car, knowing what was going to happen was intriguing to an anxious kid of the 80s. The fear of the unknown is part of my existence, though some of that has faded with age and experience. These days, I don’t think I want to know what the future holds. I think I’d rather find out through the natural course of time.

Advanced age also allows a perspective that youth doesn’t. If I were able to live the same moments over again, they would lose their magic. It’s the passage of time that allows us to see the forest for the trees. Had I been a younger parent, maybe I wouldn’t have worked so hard to get sober and get my shit together before my kids got older. I wouldn’t appreciate the little things if everything weren’t so temporary.

Watching your childhood movies with your kids also makes you see them through a different lens. I wonder if my kids thought of going back in time to see me in 1995, and—oh, the humanity. The cringiness of seeing your parents in their youth is something the movie captures perfectly.

I suppose there’s still part of me that’s hanging on to that youth. I loved being a care-free child of the ‘80s, playing outside for 12 hours a day. That little kid is still in there somewhere, and he often gets to come out and play with my kids.

Immediately after the movie, my son asked to stop and get a whiffle ball bat to practice batting in the yard. Earlier this year, he asked for a baseball glove, which, of course, I obliged. He’s not playing any organized sports, but he wants to try. Because modern parents are lunatics, all his friends have been playing organized sports for years already, despite them all being only 10 years old, so I’m worried he’ll be behind.

To try and catch him up, I go outside with him every time he asks. For us, it serves two purposes: I get to act like a kid playing whiffleball with my little neighborhood friends, and hopefully, he’s building some skill so he can join the teams with his friends. When we’re outside playing together, it’s the happiest place I can possibly imagine. Just me and my boy playing ball.

As much as I enjoy being with him, I wish all the kids would be out playing. There’s something sad about a neighborhood filled with kids NOT outside playing together. I can’t tell if it’s the melancholy of age and my kids growing up, or if it’s the romantic longing for simpler times, when free play was king. Hell, we didn’t even call it free play. We called it…play.

As they grow and I age, it takes a little more effort to run around the yard than it used to. I rest when I can, but when they come and ask to play, you bet your ass I get out there and do it. As long as my legs will carry me and my arm works well enough to throw, I’m there. As they say, I can rest when I’m dead. Or at least when they don’t want to play with me anymore.

I hope that by playing with them well into my 40s, they’ll remember this version of me someday. I hope they’ll pass on the joy we share.

Can I go back to 1985 now?