When I was about 17 years old, I watched a movie that profoundly affected the way I viewed life. It was one of those movies that haunts you and if you had known me at that age and you were to watch this movie along with a couple of others you would have basically said to yourself… “Wow. That explains SO MUCH.” This movie became one that my best friend and I would watch over and over in a pot-fueled haze and until last night, I don’t think I had ever tried to watch it sober.

The movie is “Kids” and the first time I saw it I was blown away because as much as I liked to think of myself as a tough cookie at 17 and 18, I was floored by these people and how candidly and roughly they discussed everything in their lives. I will never go so far as to say that I admired them because I most certainly did not. The movie is a very tragic cautionary tale and I have never known anyone to walk away from that movie and just brush it off.

So when Patrick and I joined Netflix a few months ago I spent an impressively unproductive afternoon at work one day building our queue and loading it with all the movies I had wanted to see while we were in Augusta but wasn’t able to because there wasn’t a theatre that showed independent films. In doing this, I came across Kids and thought… “Hey. I used to love that movie. I bet Patrick has never seen this… clickety click!!”

I tried to explain the movie as I remembered it to Patrick and he was… unsure. But yesterday evening as we sat down to dinner we popped it in and started to watch it.

Oh. My. God.

That is the most tragic movie. I hated all those kids. They were horrible people. And the movie was just… uncomfortable. Where I used to see it as a story about worldly kids in New York; mature beyond their years that have been left to their own devices; now I just looked at the screen and wanted to know where in the world their parents were and why those little bastards weren’t in school. But mostly it just made me sad.

And by the way? This was all in about the first 15 minutes of the movie because that was all I could stomach before turning to Patrick and being all “I no longer love this movie. I think I may be a grown-up now.”

So I’m vaguely and morbidly curious to watch the other movies that I remember watching during that period in my life from about 1994 until 1999 and see if I have the same reaction. The ones that I can think of off the top of my head are “The Doom Generation”, “Welcome to the Dollhouse”, “Freeway”, “Natural Born Killers”, “The Basketball Diaries” and “Slums of Beverly Hills.” With the exception of “Basketball Diaries” and “Slums of Beverly Hills” (both of which Patrick hates and I own and will also watch anytime they are on television) I haven’t seen any of these movies in the last 10 years.

Has this happened to anyone else?