You Will Fail Here. #30DayMovieChallenge- Day 3: Your Favorite Adventure Movie

"You lost today, kid. ...but that doesn't mean you have to like it." - Fedora Guy

I didn't have the best relationship with my father as a kid. I still don't.
Apparently neither did Henry Jones Jr., better known as Indiana Jones. In the third installment of the franchise, Indy (Harrison Ford) returns to search for his father, (Sean Connery) who has been abducted by the Nazi party in order to find the Holy Grail. While on the surface, this film is about both Jones finding the artifact- in reality it's about Indiana discovering himself and developing a rapport with his dad.

My father was an athlete. He played football the majority of his life, even playing a bit of arena football. I imagine if social media was then what it is today, he may have had a shot at the show. We were/are polar opposites though, because my sport of choice was baseball. Whether or not that was subconsciously intentional to piss him off, I'll never know. I remember when my father first saw me with my practice bat. I thought he'd have something positive to say, not that it would have mattered, it's hard to respect the opinion of someone whose most popular reply to me, or anything I was interested in was "I don't care"

He pretty much told me I didn't have the body for baseball. I was weak.

I don't like losing. I never have, never will. I don't like reading about people who think it's okay to lose. I don't like second place, I don't like honorable mention. The ultimate gratification of winning was knowing that some other jerk-off was number 2. But I lost. I made the team, but I lost my place to a better player. It was devastating. I fucking hated that kid for years, and he didn't do anything to me. I blamed my father, even though he didn't give a shit about baseball- but I equated him to being right there on the diamond beaning me at the plate. Fuck him. He said I would lose.

In this particular Indiana Jones film, Indy does A LOT of losing. He loses a fight of morals, and the chance to rescue a priceless artifact in the first ten minutes of the movie. He loses the girl, he loses the diary, he loses the grail, he loses everything that is supposed to be important. Never once does he enjoy the feeling of defeat, and each time you can almost feel him get a little more bitter. But, right at the end of it all, he gains the fellowship of his dad, and it becomes obvious that was the only battle that mattered.

I never talked to my dad about my interests in baseball outside of that one incident, nor did he ever ask. In fact, I'm fairly certain that if I were to bring up the issue, he wouldn't recall it.
I was 17 when I signed up for the military, and the last thing he said to me before giving his consent was something or some other about my ability to go through with service. I wasn't listening to him, because all I heard was, "You will fail."
I decided at that point, I didn't want anything to do with that guy again.

14 years later, times change and people grow. I obviously didn't fail, but I have learned to lose without destroying myself in the process. I learned how to take a failure, never to like it but replan and return with a win.
...and oddly enough, I'm now friends with my dad.

Kinda. Sorta.

Movie: Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989)
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Supernatural fiction-adventure
Starring: Harrison Ford, Sean Connery
Netflix Streaming: No