I Turned 53 Yesterday, and I Watched The Facts Of Life And Different Strokes

I also wrote a story about actor John Cusack

Yep! I turned 53 yesterday and watched The Facts of Life. I wanted to remember a show I grew up watching 35 years ago as a 1980's kid.

I told my son the day before I wanted him to watch a show I watched when I was his age, 14. The idea popped in my head on a night walk at the park, and I chose The Facts of Life since he’d recently watched a parody of the show.

You remember Blair, Natalie, Jo, Tootie, and Ms. Garland, the housemother at a dormitory of the all-girls private school in Peekskill, New York.

I thought my son might like to see the real version. It was a good episode on a boy crush with a moral lesson and the characters didn’t seem outdated, and I recalled as we watched the show that I used to have a crush on Jo.

Then we watched Different Strokes.

We took a break for cake my wife made with strawberry frosting after Different Strokes before watching Martian Child with John Cusack. He was my favorite actor from the 1980s through 2000s before he vanished from movies in 2010.

Science fiction writer and boy in a box

I highly recommend this less-heralded 2005 film about a Science Fiction writer who adopts a boy who spends most of his day in a cardboard box. Cusack’s character is recently widowed and decides at first not to adopt the boy.

But he returns to talk with the social worker.

“Just as a point of interest. What makes you think I would be a good match for a boy who spends most of his time in a box?”

“He thinks he’s from another planet.”

— David and social worker in Martian Child

A deep parenting movie

It is a surprisingly deep movie on parenting because it shows how the traditional playbook doesn’t work with a kid who believes he is from Mars, and Cusack has to find alternative ways to connect and build a relationship with his son.

Cusack tries to see the world from the boy’s perspective, buying tons of Lucky Charms when he learns this is the only food the boy will eat.

When the boy breaks something and he thinks his dad cares more about material stuff than him, there is a scene where father and son break A LOT of stuff in the house to show how his son is more important than objects.

The best 2-star movie

The movie beautifully shows how a child’s fantasy life can be stored trauma from a past event. I usually agree with Roger Ebert’s ratings for movies on his website, but I believe this movie deserves more than two stars he gave it.

But what do I know … I’m not a professional movie critic.

Seriously, this is a GREAT movie for any parent with a neurodiverse child to show how to build a relationship with an outside-the-box kid.

The tears rolled down my cheeks in the climax, and the movie reaffirmed untraditional parenting methods work best with my son and it’s okay to be on a different parenting path.

What was it Robert Frost said?

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

— Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Then I gave the remote over to my son and wrote a story about my man-crush from my teenage years to my early forties, “What Happened to John Cusack?”

I’ll think tomorrow about what it means to be 53 or sometime in the future.

Thanks for reading my story.

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Or check out my YouTube video on Tips for Success on Medium.