Putting Myself in the Picture

My niece was telling me just the other day how much she’s enjoying her Netflix trial period; my response was that I thought it would be hard for me to find enough I really wanted to watch to keep a Netflix queue going. I know I’ve mentioned before that movies are not exactly our thing around here.

There was one recent movie that I absolutely insisted on seeing, however: Toy Story 3. Not only am I a huge fan of the first two films, and of Pixar in general – plus for me, Tom Hanks is one of those guys where if he reads the phone book, I’m in – but I got the message that this film was very intentionally pointed at me.

Well, perhaps not the rather narrow demographic of 49-year-old man who loves baseball, eats a lot of junk food, and can sing from memory almost every song Barry Manilow’s ever recorded… but the reviews I read indicated that the movie had particular resonance for parents.

The plot revolves around, or at least is set in motion by, the fact that Andy (the toys’ boy), is now going off to college. All the reviewers seemed unanimous: judging the movie entertaining, but also feeling an emotional reaction. And I, as a guy who occasionally chokes up at a well-done Hallmark commercial, felt myself squarely in the bulls-eye on that one.

Knowing that – and even at this late date, always mindful of potential blog topics – I monitored my reactions throughout. The critics were basically on-target; it’s a terrific and entertaining movie, although there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on that didn’t quite totally hook me in the way that the first two did.

I was, however, a little caught off-guard by my reaction to the emotional set-up. I came in forewarned that Andy was going off to college and that that was really going to affect me as a parent. Maybe it’s because my kids are miles away from that scenario (or at least it certainly feels that way from here), or maybe it’s just the way I’m wired – as I’ve proved in this space over and over again – but I really didn’t identify with Andy’s mom all that much.

I identified with Andy.

When he had to box up all of his toys… when the toys themselves realized that their time with him was irreversibly over… when he got in the car to drive away… all of that hit me like a nightstick to the gut. I wasn’t flashing forward to that sensation of “losing” my children forever; I was flashing back to the sensation of losing my own childhood.

I have to say that I think I envy Andy a little, even though he’s a fictional character (or maybe because of that, I guess). I’ve had all these experiences in my past that I maybe didn’t really “get” at the time, and I rehash them in this space quite a bit in an effort to redeem them, or attach some kind of deeper meaning to them – whether or not there actually was one.

But in the marvelous final scene of the movie, instead of waking up years later to realize his childhood is gone and he doesn’t really know quite where or when, Andy seemed to recognize that moment for what it was. He took it out of its box and looked at it, celebrated it, intentionally passed it on… and then moved forward to embrace the next phase of his life.

And now I know that when I grow up, I want to be an animated, fictional teenager.