Back to the Future Day

The year of 2014 was pretty intense for me, with the first trip to China, and my big birthday party and me angling for a raise plus what in retrospect was the biggest Black Friday of my life. Yet despite all that went on that year in late 2014 I had a notion hit me out of the blue after not thinking about this movie for almost a decade: that 2015 was the year outlined in Back to the Future 2. What transpired afterwards and over the next year was both somewhat of a midlife crisis plus a touch-point in my life that connects me to my past and my future.

Back to the Future 2 was one of the first movies I can remember going to see with my parents where I can remember the whole experience. I remember being excited to go to the theater, I remember thinking how cool it was the first time I saw the holo-billboards or the flying cars (which seemed crazy expense then) or the roll up TVs. I remember being scared by Biffworld, or being confused by basically the whole back half of the movie. I remember leaving the theater my dad was angry we paid full price for a movie that was "To Be Continued," while I continued to marvel at how cool the future would be. 

At the time I was seven years old and I had had just gotten a NES- aka I was about to enter the golden era of my childhood. But a big part of the future part of the movie is Marty going into his future and getting to see how his assumptions for his future (aka he assumed he would be a rich rock star) lined up with the reality (he was a loser who got fired in the movie). This made seven year old me think thoughts of what the 34 year old me would be like. Would I be married? Have kids? What would my job be? All of this I wondered for the first time as a little boy thanks to BTTF2.

After we saw it in the theaters BTTF2 being the classic that it was produced more memories in my young life. I can remember a conversation with a girl a school who complained that "They didn't show enough of the future! If they know what the future was going to be why not show us more?" I remember trying to explain to her that BTTF2 wasn't the real future, but simply someone's idea of the future but she couldn't understand the concept. A few years later I caught the movie on Directv in a part of my life when I was obsessed with reading Crutchfield and comparing the qualities of CRT tvs and I remember being fascinated in particular with the flat TV the McFlys had on the wall. One day I stayed up the whole summer night wondering what it would be like in front of me and when I would have a tv life that. 

Then after those early 1990s memories I completely forgot about BTTF2 and didn't think of it again, that is until December 2014 when memories of it hit me. At that point I went through what became a year long nostalgia trip that helped me connect with a younger part of myself and reconcile my life with the future that was to come. I obsessed about almost every part of the movie and watched it a few times within that year to try and maximize the moment and get everything I could from it. 

The first thing I really became fascinated with was the predictions made in 1989 and how they actually held up in 2015. Just like Bugs Bunny cartoons that talked about the year 2000 having ray guns and such, the main part of the future most people noticed- the flying cars- of course never happened. But this concept was already explored years prior by IBM commercials, and so instead I ignored the cars and closely examined every single prediction in that part of the movie and stacked them up against what happened in the real 2015.

In late 2014 I found every article I could that in the years prior compared BTTF2 technology with the then reality, and as 2015 and BTTF Day brought more articles and videos like this I consumed every single one I could until the very final hours of 2015 on New Year's Eve. In this pointless pursuit I got to admire the things they absolutely nailed - fingerprint readers, drones, dead CGI celebrities, 80's nostalgia, more accurate weather- and analyze the things they missed - fax machines everywhere, taxis everywhere, no internet, and no smartphones. I enjoyed how the event anniversary inspired others to actually make real (if impractical) hover-boards and auto lacing shoes. More than anything I enjoyed the predictions that came true- some that very year- that I had most looked forward to as a kid- flat TVs, VR helmets, voice commanded lights and appliances, and "dustless paper" aka a Kindle. It made me realize and appreciate I was actually living in the future, even if the flashiest part of the movie like the flying cars never came around.

But under the layer of a superficial scavenger hunt for things the movie nailed (some even in a scary manner like the rise of Donald Trump in 2015) was a few more life lessons for me that the year would bring. A big thing I noticed on my first rewatching of BTTF 2 was how positive everything was and how the big news in the future was harmless things like kids acting up. I bought myself a replica BTTF2 newspaper when USA Today had a big print of them on BTTF Day, and on it is one close prediction (us all eating kelp instead of kale) after one optimist prediction (like a female president) after another. It reminded me of how different the world was when I was young, how much more positive America seemed to be. In retrospect what I felt was something unique to my part of America that others didn't share, but it was captured in that movie like a time capsule and was a huge shock when digested today. 

The last lessons I got from the movie, and the most important ones, all had to do with me. I have always had the ability to transport myself back in time if I could find a way to get into my old mindset from that day gone by, and nostalgia is something I like to revel in. Normally though I could never do that with my childhood, and instead I would remember that part of my life as if I was an observer because it was too foreign to my adult mindset. But on BTTF Day and the months leading up to it I found that the movie anniversary allowed me to go back in time to 1989 and remember the oldest mindset I can remember going back into. I can remember my fears from then and my excitement about the things in my life then. I could remember what I thought I would be by now and what I actually was and the ability to reconcile that. 

Then one day prior to the actual BTTF Day a final big revelation hit me- I was the same age on that day as my dad was when he took me to see that movie. It made me appreciate all he sacrificed for me, and made me realize I basically got a selfish decade to myself that many people don't get in life. It made me think about having kids for the first time in serious thought, and start to think about my future when I would have to sacrifice for them. 

On the actual BTTF Day I did everything I could to soak up the moment. I followed a live blog of the many different ways people were celebrating it across the world. I drove to the fanciest movie theater in Austin and saw a re-showing of BTTF 2 by myself. I made social media posts and dreamed of how to fix up my house to one day be more like the future McFlys. But more than anything on that day I felt connected not only to my past but also my future because I knew one day that hopefully I would be looking back on BTTF Day like I was looking back on the day when I first saw the movie. I took a moment to appreciate Lindsey and Xena and Luna with the knowledge that on that day of future nostalgia I would probably miss one or more of those wonder women I enjoyed every day of 2015. On BTTF Day my brain refused to do my regular fuck off activities like read web forums or social media- it felt like a waste of the moment. Instead I took selfies with the dogs and tried to pack down the memory for the future when things would inevitably change, when I would inevitably be nostalgic about 2015.

The day after one of the men behind the BTTF series published a long article where he talked about what he got right and made predictions about the future. After reading his predictions I started to think about my future, and early the next year I would start working out and running for the first time since I was in college after being inspired to improve myself on BTTF Day. In fact I tried to do everything I could to hold onto the concept of the need for self improvement that I felt on that day and in 2016 I got into things like mining that ended up paying off for me because I felt inspired to branch out and try something new. 

Right now it is a little more than a week away from the third anniversary of that day and I still feel the effect on my life. One thing I really appreciate in retrospect was how much I tried to soak up that moment in time when it came. When Xena died in 2017 many of the pictures and memories and videos I clinged to came from BTTF day or the days leading up to it. When running didn't work out for me and my get in shape momentum fell off some it was memories of that day that keep pushing me to get back in the saddle and try again or push harder next time I do workout. Finally now that we are pregnant the idea of my son coming into the world and having his own life and experiences that I will get to be a part is something I feel like I can appreciate more after getting to basically vacation back in my childhood mindset in 2015. I can let go of my childhood now, let go of wanting to be Peter Pan and live that life forever, and instead focus on helping him have the best childhood possible. 

I knew back on BTTF Day that time would move on, and in a best case scenario one day I would be looking back how 10 or 15 or 25 years ago I took all this time to celebrate this completely fabricated day. But in a way that allowed BTTF Day to be a touchstone that runs through my life, and a way to not only climb into the mindset of 34 year old me in 2015 but also the mindset of 7 year old Jon who had his whole life ahead of him. 

The moral of the movie is the future is what we make it, and thanks to BTTF Day my future will be a better one than if my parents had never taken me to see the movie way back in 1989.