A sudden realization

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor L ike I’m sure many of you do, I enjoy the comedic stylings of Will Farrell. Sure, not every one of his movies is a hilarious masterpiece, but he certainly has more hits than misses. I mean this is the guy who gave us “Elf” and “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights” and such. He’s not afraid to get wacky and irreverent to make people laugh.

So, when I saw that he had a new movie out, and not only was it going to be free for Amazon Prime subscribers, it was also going to co-star the always delightful Reese Witherspoon, I was pretty stoked. It’s called “You are Cordially Invited,” and it’s about two characters (played by Farrell and Witherspoon, naturally) who accidentally book this high-end wedding venue on the same day and time for their special someones (in Farrell’s case, it’s his daughter who is getting hitched, and for Witherspoon’s character, the wedding is for her sister).

Anyway, as you might have come to expect from Will Farrell and company (he’s got a lot of his usual supporting cast and crew along for the ride once again), pretty soon the hijinks start and then quickly escalate from, “Sure that’s wacky but it could totally happen,” to “Oh, he’s got an alligator in her bed,” until the whole thing is just a slapstick collection of buffoonery.

Which, again, is fine and pretty much what you’d expect from the premise, right?

Except here’s the thing … about two-thirds of the way through the movie, right when you start to figure out that maybe these two folks who have gotten to the point of almost killing each other might be able to find some common ground.

It’s at this point that Farrell’s “dad” character realizes why he’s having trouble coping with the idea of his daughter getting married. He then has a little heart-toheart with Witherspoon, who by the way, is also kind of feeling like maybe she’s been too busy forging her own path, she’s missed out on some important family stuff too.

That’s when Farrell says, “ You know, when your child turns 18, that’s 92 percent of the time you’ll ever spend with them.”

It didn’t really come across as a big moment in the movie. Witherspoon just kind of nods and then says whatever she’s going on about in her own personal story arc, but my wife and I both kind of shot each other a look, and I was glad she caught it too, because no lie, that figure kind of hit me like a ton of bricks.

Was that true? Could that possibly be accurate? I sort of put a mental pin in it and we finished the movie – which I won’t spoil, except to say that if you’re a fan of the song “Islands in the Stream,” you’ll be happy with the end of the show.

And then I did some math … 18 years is 6,570 days. That’s the maximum number of days you can spend with your child before they are officially grown. And you can subtract from that total any days you might not be together for work trips, school trips, couple’s getaways, friend sleepovers and whatever else might be in there.

Once they go off, to college or the military or just to strike out on their own, those seven-day-a-week days are over. It’s maybe once or twice a week … maybe even less once they have a job and family and responsibilities of their own. So, yeah, 365 days in one year, now spread out over once a week or a few times a month – man, it’s not a lot. Even at twice a week, every week, it will take you almost 4 years to see them another 365 times! And how many of you see your adult kids that often (or, as I’m writing this, how often do I visit my parents … and they live, like, around the block).

So, yeah, it kind of gave me a bit of a shock and a little existential crisis. My oldest son will be 30 on his next birthday. Assuming I don’t get some horrible disease or get hit by a bus, we’ve got, what, maybe 30 more years together. If we somehow manage to spend at least one day a week together for the rest of those 30 years (and you know we won’t), that’s about 1,500 more visits – that’s only, if it were crammed together, a little over four years of time together. And I’ve got three kids! How much time are we really going to be able to spend as a family as the circumstances of life dictate that we commit ourselves in other things?

I was not expecting a wacky Will Farrell comedy to send me into a spiral of existential dread and acute awareness about the fleeting nature of time, but here we are.

I think I need to call my kids…