I've found that as I get older and move further into proper adulthood, I've been spending more and more time watching movies that I loved when I was a kid. There's something so pure and familiar about sitting down with a good Disney movie, that I keep being drawn back in.

Family movies have always been very grounding for me. The stories are straightforward: there's a good guy and a bad guy, and the bad guy always loses and the good guy always wins. There's usually some romance, too. One of my teachers in middle school taught me that all good stories have two main themes: war and love. If you can find them in childhood movies, then you can find them in anything.

Re-watching things that had such an imapct on me when I was younger now, as an adult, is always a little strange. I realize that part of the reason the characters behave the way they do is because they are just kids, and their brains aren't developed properly and sometimes they do stupid things, but they're just kids. It's amazing to me that kids in these movies are given such intense responsibilities. People every day are arguing against taking away kids' childhoods by making them do too many chores or projects, but then there are Disney characters who save all of China before they're proper adults (bet you can guess which Disney movie is my favorite). In the end, though, the movies still ring true to me, even as an adult.

The power that shared childhood experiences, especially childhood movies, have to bring people together, is truly amazing. I've bonded with quite a few people just by talking about movies that I loved when I was a kid. My students now know all of my favorite movies because we've either watched clips from them or I've used them as examples in-class. Movies that impact us as children do so not only because they are important lessons or interesting stories, but because they stay with us for our whole lives.