A-Z Challenge: Caddyshack

When I was 11 years old, we got a Betamax.  Now I realize younger readers may not have a clue as to what a Betamax was, so let me explain: The Betamax was a videotape machine, similar to VHS (Please tell me you remember those.  I do not want to be that old yet.), but Beta had much better quality and therefore less popularity.  (NOTE: Admitting that you do know what a Betamax was will do nothing but reveal that you are old, resist the temptation.  But do you remember how we used to have to rewind the tapes?  Ahh, the old days of home video...)

But this post is not about the Betamax, which is a B-word.  It's about the first movie we watched on our Betamax: Caddyshack.

I am quite grateful my parents let me watch an R-Rated movie when I was that young.  There were a couple brief flashes of nudity, but to my knowledge boobies have never hurt anyone, so that's not really an issue.  And my 5th-grade innocence aside, I had heard all the major swear words, so there was nothing new there.  I had no clue what drugs were, so the scenes of pot smoking went right over my head.

What I did understand was that:

- Rodney Dangerfield has the coolest golf bag ever made
- Ted Knight getting hit in the Johnson by a golf ball is hilarious ("I guess I should have yelled 'two!'")
- A candy bar in a swimming pool really does look like doody (Did you ever notice how it was caddy day at the pool, but only from 1pm-1:15pm?)
- Bill Murray and gopher puppets are all that is needed for an 11-year-old boy to laugh and enjoy an adult comedy

A few years later I even worked as a caddy one summer, when I was thirteen (between 7th and 8th grade).  It was a right of passage, as both of my older brothers caddied at Rosemont Country Club through high school.  I would have kept at it, except we moved from Akron to Dallas, and the commute was hell.  I did learn how awesome it was to have a sweaty wad of cash at the end of a shift, and how it was even more awesome to walk past the mall on my way home and spend all the money before it ever saw the inside of my piggy bank.  Still, I had managed to save up close to a hundred bucks, mostly one-dollar bills, which made an impressive pile on my bed.

(NOTE: I had originally planned to make this post about the third movie I watched on the Betamax, Conan the Barbarian, which is actually quite good and worth mentioning.  The director kept the dialogue low in the screenplay, opting to use music to emphasize the visual element, and the film does have an amazing soundtrack.  Makes me want to watch that one again.  The second movie I saw on the Betamax was Star Wars, which was my vote for the first movie to watch but I was over-ruled by everyone else in the family.  But it's not S-day yet, so the rest of that story will have to wait...)