80s movies i grew up with

As a child I remember having a problem with the film All Dogs Go to Heaven. The main character Charlie, dies and goes to heaven. Not feeling the heaven-vibe, he steals a "life watch" that, while glowing can keep him alive forever. An angel tells him as he cast out of heaven back to earth (as a zombie?) that he can never return to heaven for his crime. I assumed that if he died again, he would go to hell, like every other viewer I'm assuming, but that didn't quite add up to the title's claim.

I recently returned from a family reunion for my mother's side of the family. This side of the family is small enough that I actually know the names of every family member, unlike my ultra stereotypical Mormon-with-lots-of-kids dad's side of the family. Even though there is just my mom and her older brother, we never seem to cross paths. The last time I remember seeing my two cousins Seth and Christopher, I was young enough to use my underwear's fly as a pocket for my army men- and my grandma made sure to point that out a few times.

We met in Grand Junction, CO because it was most accessible for everyone, and not because of the reputation of being a must-see travel destination. Christopher is married with two boys of his own. Seth is single and eccentric-borderline-weird (think me in five more years of not dating and apathetic social qualities). My uncle looks exactly like his dad ten years ago. My aunt doesn't speak words often, but does have the stare of a scoundrel whispering under their breath. My sister Leah was home on leave from the Marines, and she hates Obama. My brother is posterboy missionary to keep his life from floundering into a young adulthood situation where he might have to make a decision on his own. Sarah, my older sister is obsessed with documenting every moment for scrap booking, and she is married with one little girl. My mom is losing grip with reality. Dad is always whistling for some god damned reason. Grandma is ornery and holds grudges. Grandpa is about to tell us how long the doctors have predicted he will live.

I didn't have a problem with a glowing watch being able to keep a dog alive, I had a problem with what would happen to the dog if the watch were to stop working. I'm sure this movie helped teach kids how to deal with death of their pets, and emphasized loyalty or helping others in a cute animated way, but they really should'va touched on the alternative outcomes to a broken watch and sealed gate. If heaven is paradise destination and you're locked out, where do you go? If heaven's outcasts are forced to hell then I would never steal a life watch, but if there's some void or unknown alternative, I would heavily consider that.

While the three great grandchildren played and small talk was had, my grandpa took time to poll each of his children and their spouses, and his grandchildren and their spouses on whether or not he should go ahead with a chemotherapy treatment that had a small chance of adding just a few more months to his life, or just being content with the time he has had. You can ask your loved ones their decision, but how do you truly ask yourself that question? You see, his cancer is really far along, and he himself is quite old. I don't think he asked me because he knew my answer. At least that's what I kept telling myself on the car ride home.

At a fairly impressionable adolescent age I watched one of my dad's brothers die in my bed. I didn't know him well. My dad's dad was the youngest of 23 children, he had 10 children, the first two of his siblings had 10 children, a couple more had 6 kids, a few had 4, and I never really had a chance to meet  all these people except for a few close Utah relatives. So when my uncle came to live with us, I was surprised. It took months of vomit and sweat and moans, but it is inevitable that we all die. In Wyoming they don't have that great of hospitals so my uncle stayed with us while he went through treatments at the cancer institute in Salt Lake. I have several images of chemotherapy that I'll never be able to escape, and don't want my grandpa to go through. My uncle's hair sweating off his head in clumps. A grown ass man too weak hold the plastic receptical he was barfing his life into. And most horrific, the hard stare he made at each prescription pill knowing he was paying large amounts of money to poison himself and his cancer. Even though the treatment gave my uncle a few more months to say goodbye and get his affairs in order, inevitably he died. And that really sucked because he had a family that didn't know enough about him, I didn't know enough about him. I continued sleeping on the old couch my parents had uprooted me to until I saved enough money for a new bed. Sometimes I couldn't sleep because the couch sucked. One sleepless night, I accidentally bumped into his ghost.

The doctors told my uncle what to eat because would need a lot of nutrients to help the medicine beat his cancer and my parents made him stick to it. One night after my parents had gone to bed, my uncle shoved some cash into my hands and sent my sister and I to Wendy's for grease and sodium. We returned and stayed up hearing memories of growing up in Wyoming in a large dirt poor family, and rebelling against the area's conservative upbringing; what a great time we had. He payed dearly the next morning from the lack of rest and the meal, but as I held him steady over the toilet he told me it was worth it. I do thinks that I shouldn't all the time, but none of them are that worth it.

After he passed, I decided to walk to Wendy's at midnight. The funeral was on the Indian Reservation where his wife and kids lived, but not being Indian I couldn't attend. I've found that if you're looking for ghosts, you'll find them. Whether it be a lost love, missed opportunity, or a dead uncle, you will always see them when you look. On my walk through well-lit suburbia I thought about things like bone marrow and Indian culture not allowing white men to their uncle's funeral for retrubution of history's transgressions and how my other uncles felt right then.

A man exiting a Cheveron offered me a Bud Light and a smoke. My excuse for declining him was that I had basketball practice in the morning even though I had not made the team this year, lying felt ok because I was sure tired of telling everyone the truth when they asked at school. I guess I just didn't want to explain that no, I'm not Mormon but I don't drink; Such a drag. He understood my lie though, and began telling me stories his days playing high school baseball in a small town in Wyoming. Intrigued by his home, I asked what it was like to grow up in a rural area. He told me stories of when he, my dad, and my uncle would practice shooting. How the sheep would wander in front of them because sheep are dumb, and they would have to shoot them in the butt with their pellet guns to get them to move. He told me about the cat that watched their barn, that he and my uncle despised, but kept the mice in check. He told me about each of the boys having their own horse to break in, which my uncle wasn't very good at, but he was patient enough to help him.

Well, those are the stories I heard. He invited me to his trailer park to hang out with some friends. I had always looked down on this development and excused myself to get some sleep before my basketball practice. He understood this lie too. I kept walking. I went to the Wendy's I recently quit working at, climbed in the drive thru window, put a stained yellow shirt on over my tee, an apron over my pj's, and started working. The manager gave me a stern yelling. Something about minors who weren't employees working for free at 1 am on a school night could get him into a lot of trouble. But the thing is, he probably knew someone with cancer, and that sense of unity should have let us work peacefully together for a while.

I wish the movie Goonies would explain how the gang came about the motto "Goonies never say die". I really want to know. I imagine some really bad shit happened to them. One classmate they all had felt the pressures of adolescence on top of being beaten on from an alcoholic father, so he hung himself from the clothesline by the shed. The rest of the Goonies found him the next day. Probably a school counselor tried to help them talk through it, but ultimately they figured that shit out on their own. They're Goonies after all. They called a meeting and voted on a positive reinforcement motto that would serve as the club's fountain of youth. I wonder if the vote was unanimous though, or if everyone just went along a couple of more vocal Goonies who were terrified of death? These kids are pretty intense. Boobytraps, pirate riddles, fugitives, these kids can handle death, but you never know.

My grandpa went into the weekend with the intention of letting us know he's content with the life he's lived. He mentioned to my little sister that he would get a 21 gun salute at his funeral, and that would be neat he thought. He added that between his military pension, civilian pension, and life insurance policy, my grandmother would receive 4 grand a month. But he left weekend with a totally different perspective. I don't think I would've told him to throw in the towel, but I don't think I would've been able to push him toward chemo either. Its good that he didn't ask me. I don't want to be selfish and influence that decision either way, because what if it is the wrong decision? I feel guilty enough for hardly ever calling him. My family did though. I don't think they have what it takes to be Goonies.

I remember on my 8th birthday, my grandpa took me out to lunch. I chose McDonald's because I was a kid, and that is what kids want. The inside was jammed pack with people during the lunch rush, and after 10 minutes of not progressing in line, we opted for the drive thru. I wanted to get a Sprite to drink, but the McDonald's employee kept hearing "fries". My grandpa in an ideological slur that still exists telling the woman very sternly to learn the language of the land. He took me to Atlantis Burger, which had no line, and we ate a real American hamburger. I never cared much for french fries after that. I didn't return to a McDonald's until I was senior in high school.

I was going to be baptized that weekend. Friday night at about 6:30pm when Seinfeld came on Fox 13, my dad and both grandparents got into an argument over which side of the dishwasher would best fit their coffee pot (my grandparents don't believe coffee should be apart of the Word of Wisdom, they're adamant about the church being wrong on that). My grandparents got a hotel room, sat on the opposite side of the chapel at my baptism confirmation, and didn't speak to my dad for over five years. My grandma doesn't really let things go. I didn't really watch too much Seinfeld growing up because it reminded me of that night. Whats the deal with people getting so upset over how their dishes get washed? Call me crazy, but doesn't a dishwasher evenly wash both sides of the dishwasher?

I would still visit my grandparents. They came and visited me once or twice even, but always stayed in a hotel. They only came when my mom was "disappointed" in me. I failed 3rd term Spanish in 7th grade. I had been coasting along by rarely participating the first 2 terms, but at semester break I got switched to Mrs. Birdsall's class to accomidate my schedule. She was such a bitch. I was starting to go through a big growth spurt leaving my school uniforms at appropriate tease-that-kid lengths, but my family was poor and couldn't afford more until next school year. Mrs. Birdsall repeatedly called on me to answer questions, or talked to me in Spanish, and all my classmates would laugh at weak skills and clothing. She called me up to the front of the class and asked me how to say _____ and she would point at my pants, or my polo, or my old shoes. Whatever Birdsall, karma.

I did not want to go to that class. My mom fought me everyday to study. Until my grandpa visited to help me study. Spanish. That's when I first understood irony. I got a solid C for the 4th term. And the school did away with uniforms that summer. that was the last time my grandparents felt comfortable enough in their driving ability to come see me. And I egged Mrs. Birdsall's car during science the next year.

I walked to the same McDonald's I had last been to almost ten years later while I skipped seminary, because I was too tired for that game. I took my food and drink to the top of the Playplace. My basketball diet didn't include carbonation. The pop tickled and gave me severe hiccups. An obese manager yelled and told me to come down. I thought it was really funny that I had two fast food managers yell at me 10 hours apart about being too old/young to do something.

Whenever I ditched school it was usually to do something far more boring than the class I should've stayed in. Like I'm lame ass Cameron, without a Ferris Bueller for a friend. Laying in bed depressed into a coma because I'm a white kid from the suburbs. But on the positive side, I don't have to play third-wheel to two attractive friends being lovey dovey. Where do they get off? I don't see why they should be so happy in high school. I did feel a bit like Ferris when my seminary teacher got ahold of our family's real telephone phone number toward the end of the year, and my mom made me stay after school and make it all up. Well I guess, that too, is like Cameron to get caught. My catatonic Ferrari moment. The only other person in the makeup class with me, was the other kid who got cut from the basketball team this year.

I confessed that I was attending only to please my mother. His confession was that seminary would be good practice for a mission, and a 'mission was the only way to get a hot wife.' Verbatim that is what he told me. I remember regretting eating so much McDonald's over those few months, but not the seminary makeup. I'm glad I heard him say that. How is it no one looks at him and sees how deeply afraid he is? A secret is a disguise that keeps us scared. And those things are always changing, and that's okay too. I looked him up on Facebook, and he's not married yet, and maybe that's what scares him now. I can't remember what I was scared of most then, but right now in my life I'm most scared of the resolution following when someone close to me passes away.

Here I am writing about death in the most selfish format possible. I use the words "I" and "me" so much that it hurts your eyes.. on a blog, about me. And its not even like good memories I write about. No, just using vague references from 80s movies I grew up with, and I'm not even tying up the loose ends. And even for a blog it is terribly written. Like I'm the old lady in Edward Scissorhands telling her granddaughter the story of my fear made immortal by not dealing with it in the right way. I keep thinking I'm a really horrible person for not calling my grandfather and talking to him everyday. I keep thinking that it is really horrible of me to lie to my family and say that "yes, I have been calling quite often.". I keep thinking how horrible I will feel when he passes. I keep thinking about what the social sciences would say about the way I'm dealing with these things- probably that I've somehow managed to mix denial, anger, bargaining, and depression into one step. And then they'd laugh and say something like but I've seen worse.

A few days after we got home from the reunion, my two sister and one brother in law went to look at a bunch of dead people. There's a mummy exhibit at the Leonardo, and I love mummies. But I kept thinking about how the Egyptians went to such elaborate and time-consuming lengths to make sure they had a comfortable afterlife- before they were even dead. Talk about being scared of the unknown right? Then there was a room on mummified people from South America. These mummies were a thousand years older. They were babies, and women, and the cancerous. I got the impression that these m

ummies were outcasts. They could've climbed the mountains in search of a legend or shaman to heal them, but I doubt it. They had tumors, they were unwanted harlots, they were no longer allowed in the lives of the living for whatever reason. And walking through that exhibit that is how selfish I felt. I was the village.

But today, looking back on the last couple weeks, it's cool that this experience made me feel anything. I act like its the worst thing that I've neglected people in my life. Like a kind of nostalgic life story. Nostalgia is always more "bitter" than "sweet" and that's genuine. A genuine product of being dissatisfied while resolutions from the past and present are settled. Something real is always satisfying enough to show that you care. I know this blog is long, and complicated, and unorganized, but sometimes blogs should reflect life. I'm weird, and complicated, and disorganized-like most people. And sometimes I like to write about being open to that side of humanity where we all have a difficult time being open to feel things. Right? We usually just mutually consent to keep all this hidden from each other, and that's alright I suppose. But shouldn't the very notion the we all have these lingering thoughts of fears for ourselves and loved ones by our lonely mindsets, be the unifying bond that gives our lives together a sense of definition?