Equalized

On the phone with my Dad the other day.

ME: What will probably always be my favorite memory of Grandma is from 1993, when I stayed with Aunt Cheryl for three weeks and it flooded that summer. You came up on my birthday weekend, and that was the day I went to see Jurassic Park with Dave and Grandma. That was the year I turned 17 on the seventeenth.

DAD: Yeah…

ME: So, you asked what we did for my birthday, and I told you we went to see Jurassic Park. And you got all blustery like you do and said “Again?! You went to see Jurassic Park again?! You must’ve seen it fourteen times by now! You don’t need to go see Jurassic Park anymore!”

And then Grandma suddenly said: “Oh, you’re just like your father was at your age. I remember the year we drove all the way to California and back to Iowa and went to Disneyland. The Saturday we got back, all your dad wanted to do was borrow the car so he could go the drive-in and see Billy Jack again. He must have seen that movie thirteen times!"

DAD: Yeah, well, she was right…

ME: That’s what’s so great about grandparents. They equalize when your parents get all haughty.

DAD: But what she didn’t realize is that Billy Jack was a meaningful movie with an important message about the times. What was that, 1971, 1970? It had important things to say about society and the direction it was going in.

ME: What’s that? That sometimes the best way to deal with societal issues is with a punch in the mouth?

DAD: Well, sometimes it is.

ME: Well, that’s why I went to see Jurassic Park fourteen times. For the important message.

DAD: Jurassic Park didn’t have a message, it was just some cartoon dinosaurs chasing kids around.

ME: It taught you how to survive mankind’s toying with genetics and cloning animals that should be extinct. And when the cartoon dinosaur clones come for you, I’ll know what to do and you won’t, because you didn’t see Jurassic Park fourteen times, my friend.

DAD: Yeah, I’ll only have my army training to help me out. You could see Jurassic Park a hundred times and it wouldn’t matter.

ME: Oh, quibble…