The Older I Get, the Less I Identify With the Hero of the Story

All these years later, I realized Uncle Rico was a hero in his own right

Fox Searchlight Pictures

I can clearly remember my grandparents raving about Grumpy Old Men in 1993. The movie is hilarious—Burgess Meredith dropping innuendos will never not be funny—but it’s strange that of all things, my grandparents laughing about their viewing became one of my core memories.

They had a richer enjoyment of the film because it was lived experience, told by people of a similar vintage. They appreciated it in a way I’ve still never been able to. I liked it as an anthropological device—ahh, so this is what being old is like. Jokes about your equipment not working and living in fear of indigestion.

Hollywood provides movies for all of life’s seasons. It just happens with less frequency as you get older. The hero’s journey is more exciting when it involves fighting galactic empires than when it means grappling with the slow decay of time.

Well into my 40s, I’m older than the protagonists in many movies. It’s a development I’ve been tracking with mild concern.¹ I can think of plenty of stories where the hero is quite a bit older than me.² And there’s a new action sub-genre that suggests aging is not real, actually. But we all know the truth, and I’m just not ready to transition to the Philomena demographic.

I was in my 20s the first time I saw Napoleon Dynamite. I could still readily identify with a gawky teenager in oversized glasses who’s oblivious to his tragic sense of fashion. I felt a tinge of phantom recognition when I recently revisited the film, but mostly I thought about how the troubles of high school and awkward, neophyte love were unfamiliar things. I could still access those emotions through Napoleon as my proxy, they just felt secondhand. That part of me isn’t completely gone—The Goonies still rekindles old feelings—but apart from nostalgia, it seems inaccessible. Like looking at a photograph of yourself and having no memory of when it was taken.

In my recollections of the film, Uncle Rico was a sideshow. It wasn’t that he wasn’t funny. He was too ridiculous. “How much you want to make a bet I can throw a football over them mountains?” Outlandish bravado made funny because he seemed to genuinely believe it.

So it was shocking when Uncle Rico was the most sympathetic character this go-around. He’s everything you remember. Hopelessly oblivious. Lives out of a van, when he isn’t reliving memories of 1982. Records himself throwing footballs under the assumption a pro scout will see the tape and immediately sign him to a contract. He even buys a time machine.

Uncle Rico is in his 40s. Whatever window existed for a football career is long past. I think we can safely assume football was never really in the cards—he was the backup high school quarterback in Idaho. But he’s convinced his entire life would’ve worked out differently if his coach had played him in the state championship. This belief is so all-encompassing that Uncle Rico can’t move on. He never got his shot.

Looking on from my 40s, it’s actually pretty tragic. And more than a little familiar. Because for all the jokes made at his expense, the truth is Uncle Rico could actually sling it. Maybe?

Admittedly, every time he throws a football, he looks like Tom Cruise attempting any sport. It’s the uncanny valley of athletics. But despite his unusual delivery, Uncle Rico nails Napoleon with a steak while Napoleon is riding a bike. The headshot knocks his glasses off. It’d be a tough throw with a football. With a steak? Practically impossible. Uncle Rico makes it look easy, and sits down unfazed at his competence.

We can quibble over whether or not steak frisbee translates to the gridiron. The facts remain. Uncle Rico is a delusional goofball. He can throw things that may or may not include footballs. He’s too old for an athletic career. He pursues dreams that will never happen.

It’s inspiring.

As I sit here typing this, I’m the same age as Uncle Rico. I may actually be a little older. I’ve been writing since my 20s, and dreaming of it since I realized people were paid actual dollars to create some of my favorite books. My deepest fear is that I already missed my shot. I harbor dreams that may be impossible. I strive for them anyway.

There are other, more embarrassing similarities to Uncle Rico, which we’ll safely tuck away into a footnote.³

The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized one’s perception of time changes with age. What was once old now seems young. And, of course, the reverse is also true; consider how these kids describe life at 40.

excerpt from Happy Birthday! (you poor old wreck)

We laugh because it’s ridiculous, but masked by the innocence is a kernel of truth.

Last year I watched One Day, a Netflix series about two people whose lives intertwine over the course of 20 years. I could not identify with the characters at the beginning of the story, when they are college kids doing college kid things. It’s not that I have no frame of reference. I went to college and did college things. But I haven’t been that person in years. I’m old enough to be the parent in the story, and that’s the lens my brain forced upon me—seeing my adult children in the character’s shoes. It was a weird experience. The realization that maybe I was too old for certain kinds of stories was genuinely unsettling.

I couldn’t enjoy One Day until the characters aged up and, honestly, grew up. Until then, it felt like I was watching something meant for someone much younger. That has never happened to me before. It hasn’t happened since, but the specter of it lingers in my mind anytime I watch something in which the characters are drastically younger than me.

Logically, I know it shouldn’t matter. Age, like race or gender, is just one aspect of a character. Stories help us see the world through other eyes. Sympathy starts with understanding; the power of fiction is in its ability to viscerally immerse us in someone else's life. If I want to understand young people—ugh, I am such an old—I need to watch movies about young people.

But my experience with Napoleon Dynamite suggests such intent may be waylaid by the appearance of someone whose life closer matches my own, even if the only resemblance is that we both remember The A-Team. Maybe that’s just how it goes. In unfamiliar circumstances, we naturally gravitate toward the familiar.

I think that’s a good thing, actually. It means that a single story can be approached many times throughout your life, and each time you’ll take something new from it. The story obviously doesn’t change. We do. And that change amplifies things we never noticed before, in ways perhaps unintended even by the people who created it. That’s pretty amazing.

It also means I can keep rewatching Star Wars and coming away with fresh insights. Win-win.

When I first met Uncle Rico, he was an old man and a loser. Now? Well… he’s still a loser. He’s willfully mired in the past and unable to do anything meaningful with his life. But he’s also an unwitting inspiration to middle-aged dreamers everywhere.

It’s so easy to give up on dreams. Especially when you reach your 40s and start thinking about all the time that’s passed and all the chances you didn’t take. For all his faults, Uncle Rico hasn’t given up. He’s delusional, clearly. But all ambitious dreams have a hint of madness. It only looks silly because it hasn’t worked yet.

1. True story: I use Harrison Ford’s age when he played certain characters as a kind of barometer of my own aging progress. Why Ford? I guess because I’ve always been a fan and he loomed large during my formative years.

For most of my life, he was the world-weary older character in the first Star Wars. (He was roughly 35 at the time.) The day I became older than Han Solo was surreal.

Currently, I’m the same age as Ford during The Last Crusade, which I’ve always considered the end of his 20-ish year run as an action hero. From there, he quickly pivoted to less physically demanding roles.

2. Just off the dome: Logan, Unforgiven, the Obi-Wan Disney+ series, The Expendables franchise, all the John Wicks, It’s Complicated, and every Harrison Ford movie since The Last Crusade.

I have no idea what It’s Complicated is doing in that list. I could’ve just said ‘Meryl Streep movies.’ I think it’s because It’s Complicated fits the theme. And it’s also involves olds having sex, which ties back to Grumpy Old Men.

3. There are two other ways Uncle Rico and I are similar:

• My parents have been calling me Rico since the early 90s, thanks largely to the Rico Suave music video. You don’t need to watch the video—I’m not there. The comparison arose—I think—because I spent an exorbitant amount of time styling my hair. It was a whole deal. The implication was that I was this cool lady’s man, which as my wife can attest, is completely unfounded. Anyway, my nieces could call me Uncle Rico and nobody would bat an eye.

• In college I raised money by doing in-home sales of kitchen knives. The knives are great, but I’ve never forgotten the embarrassment of asking my friends if I could come over to sell knives to their parents. It absolutely felt like showing up with a box of cheap plastic bowls.