Forrest Gump Quotes that Are Still Stuck in My Head

Selfies.  If Gump were around today he'd be taking a few, I bet.

 Wow!  It's been twenty years since Forrest Gump came out.  I knew I was old but...  I didn't realize it had been that long until I googled it to make sure I wasn't doing something embarrassing like spelling Forrest wrong.  Which is funny because I could have sworn I watched it in high school, but that would have made it even older.  It's amazing that the movie is still in my head.

I have a British friend who told me once (also years ago now) that she could poke all kinds of holes in the plot of the movie.  I advised her not to.  I told her that the movie was not about a great plot.  It was about walking through iconic moments in American history with a character who unwittingly reveals what they mean to us as a country.  Well I might not have said that exactly, but that's what I meant.  Memory is a funny thing, isn't it?  Maybe it wasn't like that for everyone, but for someone like me who had spent more time out of the country than in it when I watched the movie it spoke to being an American.  For an earlier generation than mine, but one that has had a huge impact on the country.  What would we do without Baby Boomers?

The reason I bring it up is that a few lines from the movie still pop into my head on at least a weekly basis.  And so, in case you need a stroll down memory lane, here they are in no particular order....

"Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks." (Link is to a Youtube video of the scene.  Like the person who posted it, I'm not sure about copyright issues, but if you want to watch it, it's there at the moment.)  It's a very serious scene where Jenny throws rocks at the crumbling house where she was abused as a child.  But she runs out of rocks and throws her shoe before crumpling onto the ground in despair.  Most of the time, though, when it occurs to me I'm thinking of some small commodity that I know won't really solve the problems in my life, but I keep grasping at anyway.  "Sometimes there just aren't enough chocolate covered raisins" for example.

"That's good.  One less thing!"  Forrest says this when he finds out that he doesn't have to worry about money any more because some "fruit" (stock in a new computer company) that his friend invested in turned out to be worth a lot.  Forrest didn't seem to be worried about much in life, but I tend to feel pretty overwhelmed most of the time.  So if the five-year-old tells me he ate his breakfast or I don't have to figure out what to make for supper because we're going out to eat I think, "Hey!  One less thing!"  And then I usually think about all the ways that having tons of money could take the pressure off and make life SO much easier.  Daydreaming happens.

Which brings me to the one that I have, in spite of my "no particular order" claim, been saving for last.  "Shit happens."  OK, I'm pretty sure that this didn't originate with this movie.  But I lived a pretty sheltered life (in some ways) and this is where I heard it first.  (People who know me can testify that profanity is not usually a part of my vocabulary, but it can be very useful, I have discovered.)  Some days I want to adopt this quote as my life motto.  Sure, it can be comforting and empowering to believe that things happen for a reason.  That we can impact the outcomes in our lives or that someone outside the flow of history is pulling strings on our behalf.  But sometimes it's just exhausting.  Sometimes I don't want to know how war or starving children or my latest three day migraine or yet another blowout diaper fit into the grand scheme of things.  Sometimes it's shitty (literally).  And sometimes it just happens.  Fatalism has it's attractions at this point in my life.

"That's all I have to say about that."  Oh looky!  One more!  These quotes just all go together like peas and carrots.  OK, stopping now.