Adventures Not in Babysitting
The summer movie season is upon us (actually, it’s been upon us since Memorial Day, but way back in the days of Jaws it didn’t begin until July) and the tug for adventure pulls a little more insistently. After every movie my brother and I watched as kids, I’d feel the restless stirring and yearning for excitement. We got it out of our systems by playing hide and seek or Marco Polo in the pool (I know, the excitement level would barely merit one out of six flags), but as kids all the adventure could take place in our heads, and the world of pretend and make-believe was enough to carry us through.
There were certain movies that brought this out more than others – The Goonies (one of the best adventure movies of all time), Stand By Me, Adventures in Babysitting (I totally wanted to be Elizabeth Shue dancing around her bedroom lip-syncing “Then He Kissed Me”), Return of the Jedi (I was too young to remember the first two), Cloak and Dagger, War Games – mediocre movies all of them, but for a couple of boys they were the world.
As adults, we take more calculated risks - skydiving, rock-climbing, bungee jumping (and by “we” I mean anyone other than me – you won’t catch me white-water rafting anytime soon) – but those risks are padded with safety gear and harnesses and life insurance, not to mention the hard reality of our physical (and legal) limitations. I miss the expansive possibility of imagination, and the satisfaction that it once brought.
Thankfully there are consolations found in other risks of the artistic sort – the derring-do of baring a derriere for the camera, the heady thrill of a few well-chosen words of wit, or the audacity to live out every moment unobstructed by societal bounds. There are no safety nets here, no spare parachutes to break our falls. That’s why some of us don’t survive, and true artists live in perpetual danger of the irrevocable crash and burn. But even in that destruction, we give off a lovely light.