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📓 Saturday, February 21, 2026 — 1:14 p.m.
Busy, busy, busy.
Beep, beep, beep… 6:00 a.m.
Simba’s on top of me purring, like a small engine that refuses to quit.
Ring, ring, ring… 8:00 a.m.
“Roberto, can you move your van? I’m late.” —Dad.
And just like that, the day isn’t mine yet.
I’m parked now after Pollo Loco, typing on my iPad because I forgot I still needed a Street Cinema entry this week.
So I’m stepping into the only time machine we all have: memory.
Back then I didn’t graduate high school right away. I failed seven classes and ended up in night school—Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
They’d hand you a folder packed with assignments. You grind through them, test, repeat. Folder after folder. It felt like life was just paperwork and pressure.
The theater was my break from that loop. Ten-minute walk. Cold AC. Popcorn smell. Two movies sometimes for the price of one.
That’s where I saw Bicentennial Man.
I didn’t go in expecting anything. I was honestly running out of movies to watch.
But I walked out with red eyes.
I still remember the stupid details: the smell of popcorn… and my foot getting stuck on something under the seat—gum or something sticky. Like the theater wanted to tag me before I left: remember this.
What stuck wasn’t just the story. It was the idea.
Robin Williams plays a machine built to serve a family. A tool. Polite. Controlled. Useful.
Then something changes—small at first—but it wakes him up.
The first time he sounds angry, it hit me. Because most of us wish we didn’t have to feel sometimes. We wish we could just shut it off.
And in this film… he fights for feeling.
He doesn’t want to be an object. He wants to be part of the human race. Not as a mascot. Not as a gadget. As someone who belongs.
That thought stayed with me all day—even while I was doing those dumb assignments out of the folder. I’d be staring at paperwork and still hearing the same question in my head:
What if the thing we run from—feeling—is the whole point?
And then the film did the deeper thing.
He falls in love with a human.
And love becomes the new thing he serves.
Not a household. Not duty. Love.
A woman. A life. Something mutual. Something that chooses him back.
At that stage of my life… I longed for that. I didn’t even know how to say it clean, but I felt it.
That’s why movies weren’t “escape” to me back then. I didn’t call it that.
I just knew this: I would walk in heavy and walk out lighter. I’d smile. I’d feel better. Like I borrowed a better mind for two hours.
And it’s wild that the thing he chooses in the end is the thing most people fear:
He trades immortality for mortality.
In 2026, everybody wants to live forever. More time. More years. More upgrades. No ending.
But in that cold theater, I remember thinking: why would anyone give up forever?
Now I get it.
Maybe pain is the price of meaning.
Maybe being human is worth it because it ends.
And maybe the real horror isn’t dying…
Maybe the real horror is living your whole life as a tool.
Which brings me back to the morning call—“move the van.”
That call hits a nerve because it makes me feel trapped in a life I didn’t want… but chose through bad decisions… and I’ve been paying the price ever since.
So I’m writing this as a reminder:
I don’t want to be a tool anymore.
Do I know the exact way out yet? No.
But I know the direction.
Reader question: What’s one movie that made you want to live differently after you walked out of the theater?
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