A Good Will Hunting Scene that Could Never Happen Today…

Me with my mom (Midge) and dad (Cliff) somewhere in the vicinity of 1997, nary a phone in site. In 7 out of 10 pictures I found, I’m wearing sequins. Also, look at those eyebrows! Impressive.

Before I get into the differences between life in 1997 and 2024 (besides my hairstyles and clothing choices), see how you do on this week’s word-nerd match-up. It’s a tricky one!

Homes in vs. Hones in

A very young Cole Hauser and Casey Affleck in one of several phone-less car scenes in Good Will Hunting.

The Scene from Good Will Hunting that Could Never Happen Today

A little while ago, I rewatched Good Will Hunting, which I loved just as much as any of the first times I watched it circa 1997 (when I was finishing high school!). The story remains poignant and powerfully hopeful, and there’s something extra bittersweet about watching the amazing Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck and Minnie Driver in all their youthful glory. Seeing Robin Williams at his best is like visiting an old friend, and also so sad to know his light was extinguished far too soon.

One scene in particular gave me a zing, and it’s one that barely registered back then thanks to its utter quotidian feel a few decades ago. It’s such a “throwaway” scene I can’t even find it on YouTube to link to. Although, of course, while searching I did rewatch a couple of choice clips, like when Will’s friends give him a car for his 21st birthday and the “I was hoping for a kiss” scene over burgers with Skylar. Sigh.

Will says, “I was hoping for a good night laid, but I’ll settle for a kiss.” One of my favorite movie kisses, I gotta say.

In the scene that struck me, the male friends are just driving around town in Chuckie’s car (played by Ben). There’s this moment where they all go quiet, and they’re contemplative, looking out the window, thinking their separate thoughts together. What struck me about this scene is how it could NEVER happen today. When is the last time you looked out the window, daydreaming, in the passenger seat? The last time you didn’t use solo drive time to multi-task by listening to a podcast, a book, the news, aimless station surfing, call your mom or your friend to catch up? If you’re a parent, when’s the last time you didn’t let your kid sit in the backseat glued to an iPad, smartphone or movie screen on a long drive?

There is no way that a car with four teenagers on a joy ride in 2024 wouldn’t also have four smartphones with (one hopes) three (not four) separate sets of eyes independently glued to each one. A paragraph in Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation speaks to what may be lost with the absence of such silent communion as shown in that car ride, something we used to take for granted.

He writes: “Smartphones and social media … flood consciousness with alerts and triviality, fill the ears with sounds, fragment attention, and scatter consciousness. The phone-based life makes it difficult for people to be fully present with others when they are with others, and to sit silently with themselves when they are alone. If we want to experience stillness and silence, and if we want to develop focus and a sense of unified consciousness, we must reduce the flow of stimulation into our eyes and ears. We must find ample opportunities to sit quietly, whether that is in meditation, or by spending more time in nature, or just by looking out a car window and thinking on a long drive, rather than always listening to something, or (for children in the back seat) watching videos the whole way.”

This should be required reading for every parent.

I suppose my question is, what would it take to bring back this type of experience for our young people? Or has it gone extinct? As adults, we can make an effort to overcome the powerfully addictive pull of our devices and create these spaces once again. Especially we of a certain age can fondly remember the value of experiences like those in the car in Good Will Hunting. We can model the behavior for our kids, and even create rules and parameters that create those moments, while our children our within our purview. But how do we encourage modern teenagers to choose phone-free moments for themselves? Not much within the current environment, is my conclusion.

But if we act as a collective, we might unlock ways to make a real difference. The more I think about our current plight, the more I realize that it will never be enough for one family to keep their kids off smartphones and social media through the key developmental years (which according to research is at least 16, despite the age limit for social media being set at 13). We need to create pockets where a whole peer group follows the same set of norms.

One reason I appreciate The Anxious Generation is because Haidt doesn’t stop with outlining the causes, scale and scope of the problem. He offers smart solutions, including these:

• No smartphones before high school. (non-internet-connected flip phones are fine)

• No social media before 16. (18 seems better to me, but 16 is an improvement)

• Phone-free schools. (this is starting to happen now, but we need to advocate for it in every school, and no it’s not ok for them to have them in passing periods and lunch)

• Far more unsupervised play and childhood independence. (this one was surprising to me, but makes so much sense – but is a really big, complex topic that’s separate to but inter-related with smartphones/social media)

I’m still mulling exactly what we can collectively do to get here, but what is clear to me is that this goes far beyond the individual level. It will take collective collaboration and more trust between us as adults leaning in to create a stronger community fabric. Kids cannot stay off social media and smart phones by themselves. In some ways, they’re powerless against them. It’s up to us to fight the addiction on their behalf.

Who Gives a F*ck about the Oxford Comma?

Apparently, many people care deeply about this particular punctuation. If you don’t know, this is the serial comma that comes before and in a list of three or more items. As in: Before she settled in to write, Jessica stalled by cleaning the toilets, emptying the dishwasher, and texting her friend. That last comma is the Oxford.

In my opinion, the main reason to use the Oxford comma is because someone higher up than you insists upon such foolishness. The second reason is you don’t know how to write clean sentences, and you need it as a crutch to make sure your meaning is clear.  

Of course, I jest (a bit). But it really is superfluous. It’s written into law as part of the Chicago Manual of Style, but is NOT required by the AP Stylebook. There you go, now you know!

The video of Vampire Weekend’s “Oxford Comma” is just the right amount of weird.