No one under the age of thirty should feel as old as I do right at this moment. It is amazing to me that I can be in denial about turning 28 and yet I feel seasoned in life, though none the wiser for having lived it. The older I get the more confused I feel.
I made the fatal mistake of watching “Newsies” tonight. WOW. that movie came out when I was five and I had only a handful of memories from the few times that I saw it.
1) I knew there was something related to Doogie Howser on there. It had to do with one of the actors.
2) The main character was not the cutest boy there.
3) It was exciting and action-packed.
4) It was such an intense show. I got massive anxiety attacks from it, more than from the usual flicks.
5) I liked it.
Boy oh boy do things look different through the lens of adulthood! For one thing, how did I not notice the absolute concourses of boys in that flick? Or feel the “Mary Poppins-esk” film style? Since when was Bill Pullman in that movie? Christian Bale?! Seriously?! Batman as an orphan who dreams of going to Santa Fe for no apparent reason?! And can anyone say HOKEY! Don’t get me wrong, I love that stinkin’ flick. Search me as to why, (although anyone who can get that many boys to dance in unison and at least appear to be enjoying it deserves of a metal of some kind.)
My biggest mistake was going back in time after 10pm. Never do that. It is just asking for trouble. I started looking up some of the actors in the movie to see what else they might have been in and where they are now. Sadly, a lot of them didn’t work on any other movies or television after that and many of them died young. Their pictures on IMDB were all so 80’s-chic. It blows my mind when I remember that at one point I fell for all that 80’s stuff as much as anyone. But, then again, I was young and innocent.
I find myself overwhelmed at the sight of cast members having been in “Growing Pains”, “Punky Brewster”, “Mr. Belvedere”, “Step by Step” and yes, “Doogie Howser”. Talk about some years of my life that were all but forgotten. And let’s not even touch “The Wonder Years” with a forty-foot pole. As a child, I wondered how they filmed that kid’s life without him noticing, let alone how he remembered what he had been thinking at every moment in time. And his Dad was so terrifying! I’m amazed none of the actors were in “Who’s the Boss?” But they make up for it with one episode each of “Magnum PI” and “MacGyver” - two faces which will be forever etched on my mind, no matter how hard I may try to forget them.
I don’t know exactly where I am going with this except to say that I am freaking out. 99% of the time I feel like my entire life is ahead of me. But every once in a while, on a night like tonight, I wonder where the last 28 years have gone, and what I might have done with them. What have I done since “Doogie” started talking about “How I Met Your Mother” and “Luke Brower” drowned in the “Titanic”?
The only thing I can say for myself, definitively, is that I have learned a lot since “Punky Brewster” stopped being the epitome of how I saw myself. At least, I hope so. The older I get, the more my questions out-way the answers i have found. I feel that, at any moment, everything I think I know could be blown out of the water - like earlier tonight when I realized that, “Christian Bale is BRITISH?! REALLY?!” Or when I read that “Newsies” bombed at the box office. In my mind it was, and had always been, an un-refuted classic. I guess that is the power of limited time in a biased environment. (My family likes musicals and always seemed to enjoy “Newsies”.)
Well anyway. My one hope is that I will wake up tomorrow and, rather than be stuck looking back to the time that I may or may not have lost, I will be dreaming about where I will be, what I will have accomplished and what scheme I will be onto “Someday”. What is it that Prof. Harold Hill says in “The Music Man”?
“Oh, my dear little librarian. You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you are left with nothing but a lot of empty yesterdays. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to make today worth remembering”
I hope I haven’t piled up too many empty yesterdays and that I can still look forward to some pretty amazing tomorrows. I imagine everyone feels that way sometimes. I can just picture a Wiki page about me. (My, how times have changed!) I would hope it would have something to say about my having done something notable with my life. Even if all it could say was that I was a good person who did the best she could throughout her life, that would be wonderful.
