Big Fish and Tyler Taylor

Strange flick.

I like movies and a lot of them hold special meanings for me.

Big Fish is a movie that happens to mean a lot to me. I watched it when it first came out in about 2003 and felt kind of odd afterwards.

The movie is about a man and his dad, their strained relationship and the end of the dad's life. The dad has all kinds of stories and tells them often. The son resents his dad because of the stories.

He thought the dad was full of baloney all those years but followed up and found the stories to be truthful. The people he talked about in his stories were real.

It changed dramatically how he felt about his father.

I wasn't sure why I felt odd about the movie the first time I watched it. My own dad had passed away not all that long before this movie and because of that I felt a little weird about the ending of Big Fish.

But, my dad was not a story teller. I knew basically nothing about him and still have a lot of questions.

I watched it again recently and got a different message.

Unlike my dad, I am a bit of a story teller. I wasn't at all until my son was born and I had to learn to tell stories just to get him to go to sleep at night.

I didn't remember any fairy tales, so I just made up my own and I would like to think that they were good.

I'm not sure what my son is going through right now. I hope he doesn't resent me for telling him a bunch of stories like the son in the movie. But, I would like to be close to him at this time and we are really not.

I hope he would not feel resentment or anything else negative if he were to read this.

My father and I were never close and I don't want the same thing with my own son. Yet, there is little I can do now to change things. Unfortunately, you can't go back in time and sometimes I'd really like to.

I look at my nephew's Justin and Clay and I feel they were close with their dad. I long for that with my own son.

So, in the end, it's not whether I can tell a story or not. When all is said and done, this movie to me is about my own relationship with my son and how I long for more.

It'd be kind of cool if Tyler were to read this and give me a call.

But, life isn't that simple sometimes. Both sides have to want it and I don't want it to be like the movie and that to be on my deathbed.