Back to the Future II

I circled around to the back of the house and entered Mystery's room through the patio. He was lying on top of his bed in jeans with a laptop computer resting on his bare stomach. He was watching Back to the Future II.

"When I was in tenth grade, I wanted to kill myself because I had nothing left to live for," he said. "Then I heard that Back to the Future II was opening in twenty-three days. I had a calendar, and I would mark off each day until I could see the movie. It's the only thing that kept me from killing myself."

He paused the movie and lifted the laptop off his stomach. "When I saw it and heard the opening music, I cried, dude. It was my reason to live..."

From Neil Strauss's The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pick-up Artists, pg. 330.

It is genuinely sad how much I relate to Mystery (né, Erik von Markovik), at least in this respect. It's sort of horrifying to think about the times a big movie's release date was the only thing keeping me going.

Folks can be dismissive but that's the power of good popcorn movies. They can transport a troubled kid to a better place, if only for a short while.