Note: This entry is adapted from a piece that first appeared on my old site in November 2013.

One of my son’s favorite movies was Bubba Ho-Tep, a 2002 movie starring Bruce Campbell as an aging Elvis Presley. The film’s central conceit is that Presley, weary of soul-sucking celebrity, swaps identities with Elvis impersonator Sebastian Haff, who dies in 1977. An explosion erases the evidence of their arrangement before Elvis can reclaim his life, however, and an unfortunate accident sends him to a nursing home, where his claims that he is the King sound like the mutterings of, well, a crazy old man.

In poignant voice-overs, Elvis describes the wasteland that is old age in our society:

Where’d my youth go? Why didn’t fame hold off old age and death? Why the hell did I leave the fame in the first place and do I want it back, and could I have it back? And if I could, would it make any damned difference?

My son had pressed Shaun of the Dead on us before he began his one-man Bubba Ho-Tep publicity campaign. At the time, his father and I dismissed the zombie-comedy as “two hours we’ll never get back,” so my son’s recommendation currency was a little, shall we say, weak.

We held him off for many months.

But one summer night when his father was away on business and his sisters were in bed, my son and I decided to stay up late watching movies. I can’t remember what I picked, but I remember… “Will you watch Bubba Ho-Tep with me? Please? I know you’ll love it.” I didn’t think so. I didn’t want to. But I said, “Sure.”

With a dramatically resigned sigh.

Which he ignored.

We watched the film. Actually, I watched the film, and I also watched my son. Why was this was so important to him? Why he had invited me to — no, had all but insisted that I watch it with him?

It’s actually an interesting movie. Because it never settles on precisely what it is — drama? horror? comedy? social commentary? — it engaged me. Yes, it made me think. But not so much that I didn’t pay attention to my son.

It was 2007. Maybe 2008? So he was either seventeen or eighteen. A man.

And when the film ended, he was crying.

Just a bit. But I knew. And he knew I knew.

“What did you think? Wasn’t that great?” he asked, full of emotion.

I didn’t think it was great. But I did know that I had been given a great privilege. I had been admitted into my son’s heart. I had been permitted to see what moved him — two old men, dismissed as “worthless or sadly amusing,” dying to save their friends.

“I thought it was very touching. I think I understand why you love it so much.”

We were lucky, my son and I. We didn’t have much awkwardness between us. Because our family spent so much time together, each of us had time enough to make him- or herself clear. To say what needed to be said. To leave unsaid what was already understood. To sit in companionable silence.

That night, we sat in companionable silence, and then my son offered to make pretzels and cheese to snack on while we watched the movie I had chosen.

I don’t remember what movie that was, but I do remember how engrossed my son was in his selection. Bubba Ho-Tep meant something to him. And it meant something to him that I know it.

And I do.