Would we be friends with our parents if . . .

Have you ever wondered, if you could go back in time, if you’d get along/be friends with your parents?  Kind of the plot to the first Back to the Future movie I guess.  But seriously I was thinking about this last night while beginning to read the Thomas Berger novel Little Big Man.  I guess what got me thinking about this was that Little Big Man(both the novel and the film) has long been a favorite story of my dad’s.  I’ve never read the book before but ever since my dad showed me the movie years ago it has been one of my favorites (which is part of the reason why I’m reading the book now).  There have been a lot of things like books and movies and music (I credit my love of classic rock entirely to my father) that my dad said he loved growing up and that I have in turn come to love myself.  From the stories of my dad and mom and their college friends I’ve gathered that my dad was kind of a wild dude in his college years in the mid-seventies.  I too was quite into partying, goofing around, drinking and doing all that wild college shit.  I just wonder, if I were to go back to hang out with my dad when he was in college, would I think “hey he’s a cool guy to hang out with.”  or would I not like him?  We certainly have a lot of similarities my father and I but we also have some big differences.  My father was (and is) a lot more into sports than I have ever been (this trait rubbed off on my brother, to whom sports is really one of his only interests).  My dad also seemed to have a bit of a reputation as a “player” which is something I have never been considered.  He didn’t do nearly as well in school as I did, not bad by any means, but not strait A’s either.  I guess it is hard to gauge whether or not I’d be friends with my dad if we, say, went to school together.  We come from different times, the world of the mid-seventies was a lot different than the world of the mid-2000s.  I’d bet that we could get along because of our similar interests but perhaps wouldn’t be great friends.  It’s kind of weird to think of the fact that our parents were once young (and that someday we will be old) and living lives not all too unlike our own.  We constantly view our parents through the lens that recognizes them as such as they likely constantly view us as their children.  To think of how we’d get along as people of the same age is illogical but interesting.  Personally I doubt that I’d be able to get along all that well with my mother had I known her in college, but that is based mostly on the fact that there are a lot of things about my mother that make it hard for me to get along with her in real life.  You just can’t know.  Instead, what I can know, is what I’ve learned and inherited from both my parents that helps make me who I am today, and in general I’m pretty proud of what I’ve got.  Boy I’m excited to go home and see the folks on Friday, it’ll be really nice.

~ by Nathaniel on December 19, 2007.