I am a generation that has grown up with Toy Story. I mean how many kids of the generation now actually play with toys like the ones in the movie? They've probably got their hands all over Nintendo DS's and iphones or whatnot. The first movie I ever watched in the movie theaters was the first Toy Story when I was five. (I shared this with some kids at my church today, and without knowing it, completely revealed just how old I am! The first Toy Story came out even before they were born!) My dad always likes to remind me saying, "Do you remember your first time watching Toy Story in San Diego? Do you remember how just how excited you were? And how you couldn't stop telling me, "爸爸， 爸爸！我現在真的很開心!" I do remember that day... it was complete childhood bliss. I don't even know if I understood what was going on, but my eyes were glued to the enormous screen and I loved it... and I know for sure that baby's head on spider legs still creeps me out until this day.
One main reason why I say I've grown up with Toy Story is that Andy and I (and most people my age) are similar in a lot of ways and share the same stage of life right when each movie came out. His toys have a life of their own. I'd always imagined my toys to also have a life (so I would always put all my stuffed animals together so they wouldn't get lonely during the day). As I grew older I would at times feel twinges of guilt for not playing with them as often anymore. As Andy grew up, so did I... all the way until Toy Story 3 when Andy goes to college and so am I in college.
And so yesterday I also watched Toy Story 3 with my family in theaters... 15 years after my first movie ever. Emotions of warmth came back as I saw those familiar Toy Story characters again. Words cannot describe the pure awesomeness of that movie. But I'm so much older now than the 5 year old kid who couldn't sit still in her seat out of excitement. The Toy Story series have come to a close and in the same way my childhood days have ended. Inevitably everybody grows older. But the ingenuity of the whole movie is that you never have to loose a childlike spirit of imagination and wonder. Cheers to you Toy Story. A blog post can never do you justice.
