30 Days of Joy: When the Present Exceeds the Past

Note: This article is the next step in my challenge to find joy in something — anything — every day for 30 days. Today’s entry is part 8.

It’s always disappointing — if not a little soul-crushing — when the highlights of your youth don’t hold up to the scrutiny of adulthood.

For instance, one of my favorite movies as a kid was “Revenge of the Nerds.”

Not only did I love it for its brilliant harmonies and risque panty raid scene, I viewed it as the ultimate underdog story — one in which bullying is beaten, the guy gets the girl and good triumphs over evil.

Yet anytime I’ve seen it since, it’s fallen short of those lofty standards.

How could it not?

While it still has plenty of quotable lines (“No one’s really gonna be free until nerd persecution ends.”), it was a raunchy, college-aged comedy destined for the middle-of-the-night cable time slot in which it now airs.

So when my wife and I decided to watch another of my childhood favorites, the original “Point Break,” I was worried it would similarly fall apart.

Thankfully, mercifully, it did not.

I hadn’t seen the movie straight through in probably 15 years, and it didn’t disappoint.

The pursuit of the Ex Presidents. The insanity of the skydiving montage. The madness of Busey. The contradictory beauty of Bodhi. The countless Keanu classics, from his “You’ve gotta go down…it’s gotta be that way!” determination to his proclamation that he is, in fact, an “F — B — I AGENT!”

It was as exactly as I remembered it.

Which made it that much more glorious.

*****

This originally appeared on 100 Naked Words.