Back to the Future Day

It's October 21st, 2015! Which I know you know is the day that Marty McFly and Doc Brown arrived in the future in Back to the Future Part II.

I am fairly fond of the Back to the Future movies. In fact, Back to the Future was the first adult movie I ever saw...at the age of, oh, two or three. When our parents would watch it, we would sometimes watch it too.

You must remember that when Older Sister and I were young, our parents were still fairly new parents. It took them a while to realize that we understood what was happening in the movie well enough that we should not be watching it with them. From then on, it was off-limits.

PARENTS: You can't be in the family room right now. We're watching Back to the Future.

OLDER SISTER AND AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: But we've watched that movie before!

PARENTS: WELL YOU'RE NOT WATCHING IT NOW.

I didn't see the movie again until I was an adult. There were a couple of summers where Little Sister and I decided to watch entire movie franchises in their intended order. In this manner, I re-watched Back to the Future and first saw Back to the Future Part II. Unfortunately, I did not get to see Part III. I was working during those summers, but Little Sister was not. She invariably would get bored waiting for me to come home from work.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Let's watch Back to the Future Part III!

LITTLE SISTER: Sorry, I watched it while you were gone.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Let's watch Star Wars: Episode VI!

LITTLE SISTER: Sorry, I watched it while you were gone.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: Let's watch Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade!

LITTLE SISTER: Sorry, I watched them while you were gone.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: ...

LITTLE SISTER: But you can watch Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with me!

Although I still haven't seen the sixth Star Wars or the second and third Indiana Jones movies, I did manage to watch the third part of Back to the Future this past weekend to prepare for this very special day.

And special it was! I wore my pants inside-out (and nobody at work even noticed). Baby Sister put together a super-awesome futuristic outfit, and Little Brother passed out flyers that said, "Save the clock tower!" at his school.

All leading up to today, everyone on the internet has been like, "It's October 2015! Where's my hoverboard? Where's my self-drying jacket? Where's my lace-up sneakers? Where's my Pepsi Perfect? Where's my metal hat that looks like a stainless steel pot?"

Well, Universal Pictures and Doc Brown offered a simple explanation in a YouTube video: "The future has finally arrived! Yes, it is different than we all thought. But don't worry! It just means your future hasn't been written yet. No one's has. Your future is whatever you make it, so make it a good one."

I kind of love this video, for one of the same reasons that I love the movies. The movies are all about how choices, even seemingly small ones, can change the future of an individual's life and even the world. That resonates with me on even a religious level. My favorite scripture even says that "by small and simple things are great things brought to pass." And the opposite is true as well. our daily small, seemingly insignificant choices can make us worse as surely as they can make us better.

For a comedic sci-fi movie, that seems pretty heavy. (Ba-dum-ching!) But joking aside, it's something that I try to think about every day. Are my current choices taking me to the future I want? Are your current choices taking you to the future you want? If not, choose something else! Be the master of your own density destiny.

Anyways, happy Back to the Future Day! Make your future a good one.