by Trent Greguhn

Created on: May 01, 2009

I was getting ready for bed. My girlfriend walks out of the living room where our movie stash is kept and hands me Forrest Gump to watch as we fall asleep. I think to myself, "Sure, why not, haven't seen this movie since I ten years old," so I walk over to the DVD player and slide it in. By the time I'm back in bed the opening sequence starts and my mind regresses back to my old parents' room with their small TV and VHS player, me sitting on the floor glued as I watched Forrest Gump. I must have watched it dozens of times.

While the feather floats down and lands in front of Forrest I'm simultaneously feeling the thoughts I had as a child with the thoughts I'm having as a twenty-one year old independent adult. It's been over a decade since I've seen it but the thoughts and feelings this film left are still there in my psyche. From the first conversation Forrest has I juxtapose what I felt then and what I feel now. It's apparent to me in my current mindset that Forrest is a little challenged in some way, but I didn't feel that way as a child. Forrest was just like me, I thought, albeit with a heavy accent. And as the movie continues on I realize that apart from understanding the historical and political events engrained in the film, along with the story of love and a sense of honor that Forrest has, I am viewing this film completely differently than I was as a child. In a way I don't think is necessarily better.

After the scene where Forrest gets the braces for his legs I realized there are two distinct ways to view this film. From the perspective of Forrest and what's happening around you, to the perspective of everyone around him reacting to the things Forrest does. As a child I view it in the former, and as an adult, the latter. I think to myself how I would react and the things I would say to Forrest were I interacting with him; but as a child- I am Forrest. Forrest reacts the way I would and would want him to. He's relatable to me as a child as he could never be as an adult. And the more the movie plays the more I realized I sort of looked up to Forrest.

To a child of ten years old, Forrest is a super hero. He travels the world and the country, doing what he feels is right by his own code of morals. This is immediately relatable to my ten year old self in a way that my current self could never understand. Sure, Forrest is cool, but as adults we feel he falls into these things with more luck than anyone could wish for. At the right place at the right time, every

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