I watched Forest Gump again this week. It’s about the 30th time I’ve sat through the fictional chronicaling of the young Greenbow, Alabama boy who overcomes major odds to make major headlines. All because he wants to contribute - and he has a heart of gold.

 

 

Forest, we remember, was the only son of a young woman, weighted down by leg shackles to correct an early-life deformity.

 

He learns to run because he is pursued by school buddies. And running becomes his way of life, first earning All-American status as a ball carrier for the Alabama football team.

 

He earns the Congressional Medal of Honor for carrying comrades out of combat in Vietnam.

 

And it keeps his spiritual equilibrium later as he runs across the country - to keep his mind off Jenny.

 

She is the love of his life who first met him by offering a seat on the school bus.

 

He calls her his partner in life. “We’re so tight, like peas and carrots,” he said.

 

Jenny has her own issues, being abused by her father, then in early adulthood turning to drugs and the counter culture of Berkley and groups like Students for a Democratic Society.

 

She finally realizes, after having a child by Forest, that he is her life - and that of their young son, Forest, Jr.

 

And the love Forest shared with her from early times was finally returned.

 

He never stopped loving her. Love for her made his world go around.

 

The story is about love as much as anything.

 

There is his love for his mother.

 

There is love for Lt. Deng, the surly company commander whose life he saved in Vietnam, then supported quietly as the officer came to grips with things as a paraplegic in America.

 

There was love for Bubba, the thick-lipped Louisiana boy who befriended him through the military. Shrimping was what they talked about.

 

Perhaps there is some overplay to the script in this movie. Forest gets to meet President Kennedy as an All-American football player; he gets to meet President Johnson when he receives his Medal of Honor.

 

He takes up table tennis in the military and becomes a world-class athlete.

 

He unwittingly winds up addressing an anti-war assembly in the Nation’s capitol.

 

Although Bubba died of wounds in Vietnam, Forest visits his family and takes up shrimping, becoming a millionaire.

 

He took his earnings and invested in “a fruit company.” That, of course, was Apple.

 

He learned a saying from his mother in his early years. 

 

“Life is just a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

 

The wedding scene in their backyard in Alabama is most poignant. Jenny, caring for three-year-old Forest, Jr., askes Forest to marry her. That they do.

 

A surprise guest is his military friend, Lt. Deng, who has turned his life around and with new “titamium alloy” legs, gets around well. On his arm is a girl, Susan, whom he will marry.

 

Seventy-year-old boys aren’t supposed to get weepy-eyed over these things. But it happens every time.

 

You don’t have to watch the film, because I’ve told you just about everything.

 

But watch it anyway.