Alternatives

As I continue getting older, I spend more and more time wondering how my life would've worked out if I had made a few decisions differently. In the best example, in 1966 I saw a movie I enjoyed so much I wanted to read the novel it was based upon. When I went to the university library to look for it, I happened to encounter a girl I'd known as a neighbor years before. We sat together on a sofa and began to chat, and since I was between romances at the time, I asked her if she'd like to see a movie with me. One thing led to another, and now we've been married forty years and have three grandsons.

That movie I saw in 1966 was The Group, based on a novel by Mary McCarthy, and we watch it every time it's shown on TV. Each time I see it, I think about how things might've been if I hadn't seen it in 1966, then gone to the library the next day to find the book.

Last night I stumbled onto a movie called The Family Man, released in 2000 and starring Nicolas Cage. The basic premise of the picture is that the Cage character is permitted, through some supernatural intervention, to get "a glimpse" of the different life he'd have had if he'd made another choice thirteen years earlier. Nicolas Cage seems to make mostly action movies these days, but I like him better in parts like the one in The Family Man. It's essentially a romantic comedy, but I decided that the concept was intriguing and made me think. This movie isn't a work of art, but I recommend it as a better-than-average genre flick.