Reality Bites

Did you see the movie "Reality Bites" when it came out in the early nineties? I did. I was 13 or 14, not yet in high school, and was blissfully swept away in the fictional story of four twenty-somethings just graduating from college. The main character, played by Winona Ryder, seemed particularly comical to my pubescent self, especially her desire to be individual, independent, and not cave to the conformity of a typical 8-5 office job.

Fast forward 10 years. The 10-year DVD release of "Reality Bites" came out in 2003 (or 2004?), when I was in my first year of graduate school. I watched the movie for the second time with the same girlfriend who went with me to the movies in middle school ten years earlier. This time I was the same age as the protagonists, and the movie made me a little squirmy. College graduates working at the Gap, unemployment issues, and a general sense of unease and confusion about the future made me fairly uneasy. But I remember my arrogant, graduate student response to that feeling was, "good thing that will never be me."

Fast forward five years. I am now Winona Ryder. I drive my father's German luxury car on semi-permanent loan, I have no idea what in the world I got for all of that fancy education of mine, and I just found out yesterday that my current job with so much long-term potential will be nonexistent as of the end of the month. Winona's character and I even have the same propensity for eating cheetos puffs when we are upset. Sigh. Isn't it funny how you can draw so many different things from a movie depending on your current life situation? Well, at least Winona gets the guy at the end of the movie, and that is definitely a part of my life that I can't complain about at all, so that is a bonus similarity. And my boyfriend is cuter than Ethan Hawke, too. So should I go full-circle and apply for a job at the Gap? Well, maybe Ann Taylor is more my style...