I made last-minute plans with an old friend (in fact, the first friend I made after my dad died) and her kids to see Jurassic Park 3-D on the anniversary of his death. It didn't occur to me until we walked into the theater that I saw this film on the last Father's Day we had together, less than a year before he died. I gave him a shitty fish statue. That statue has lived in the acute corner of my brain where shame goes not to die but to malinger forever. I saw the movie that Father's Day with my aunt and cousins, and they brought me home afterward. My dad wasn't feeling great following chemotherapy, but he had enough spirit about him to bitch about the movie, which he had seen the day before.
That's right; this is a movie that has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an 83% audience rating. This is a movie that practically everyone in America loves, and not without reason. It's not a craptastic action film that satisfies our bloodlust; it's an awesome action film that satisfies our bloodlust, and speaks to our emotions, and captures our intellectual imaginations. It's a really good movie.
But it wasn't enough for my father; it never was. When he read Michael Crichton's book, he saw it as bigger, grander, more realistic. My father wished that they had waited twenty years to make it to give technology time to catch up with the vision he had in his head. This relentless pursuit of perfection (for other people, mind you) was the source of much friction between us. During my elementary and middle-school years, I was a lackluster student, bored and frustrated. I once ended up having to falsify data on a science project because I couldn't get a chicken egg to float in a glass of water, and my father admonished me: "Anything worth doing is worth doing well."
"I was not the one who decided this was worth doing," I responded. I was nine; my fifth-grade teacher was forcing me to do the project which, for the record, was not worth doing. But this was representative of the many lectures and shouting matches that resulted from my grades. We argued about grades until the semester before he died - I had gotten a D in Geometry on a mid-term report card, but an A in Spanish. He made me apologize for the Geometry grade en español.
"I was not the one who decided this was worth doing," I responded. I was nine; my fifth-grade teacher was forcing me to do the project which, for the record, was not worth doing. But this was representative of the many lectures and shouting matches that resulted from my grades. We argued about grades until the semester before he died - I had gotten a D in Geometry on a mid-term report card, but an A in Spanish. He made me apologize for the Geometry grade en español.
Twenty years ago I was fourteen years old, yet to begin my first semester of Spanish. The Internet was not in widespread use, and I was trying (and failing) to save money for a peripheral for my computer but I couldn't decide if I wanted a CD-ROM drive or a modem. The only people who had cellphones were pretentious assholes (doctors still just carried pagers), and those they carried weighed approximately half a ton. Newspapers were how most people got their news. Bill Clinton had just begun being the president. Not only had September 11 not happened yet, but Oklahoma City hadn't either. The point I'm belaboring here is that the world has changed in fundamental, significant ways.
Sometimes I look around at the way we live, and wonder what my father would have thought. Cigarette prices and their attendant taxes would have enraged him, having been a lifelong smoker himself. I don't know what he would have thought of having a black president - I remember him as being pretty racist, but my mother's own attitudes toward social change have mellowed significantly in the intervening years, so I wonder if his would have as well. I think smartphones would have charmed him, but then I remember his attitude toward Jurassic Park and wonder if he would have all sorts of reasons why they weren't as good as they could be and how they could be better.
Seeing that movie that features high-waisted pants, "an interactive CD-ROM!," and Samuel L. Jackson smoking in an office made me fiercely nostalgic for something I never had. It blindsided me; I hadn't seen the movie since its original theatrical release and was excited for it, but I hadn't expected an emotional reaction. I hadn't known I could so fiercely miss someone I barely remember.
Sometimes I look around at the way we live, and wonder what my father would have thought. Cigarette prices and their attendant taxes would have enraged him, having been a lifelong smoker himself. I don't know what he would have thought of having a black president - I remember him as being pretty racist, but my mother's own attitudes toward social change have mellowed significantly in the intervening years, so I wonder if his would have as well. I think smartphones would have charmed him, but then I remember his attitude toward Jurassic Park and wonder if he would have all sorts of reasons why they weren't as good as they could be and how they could be better.
Seeing that movie that features high-waisted pants, "an interactive CD-ROM!," and Samuel L. Jackson smoking in an office made me fiercely nostalgic for something I never had. It blindsided me; I hadn't seen the movie since its original theatrical release and was excited for it, but I hadn't expected an emotional reaction. I hadn't known I could so fiercely miss someone I barely remember.
