As I watched Boyhood I was reminded of many aspects of my own childhood. I was trying to figure out how close I was in age to the children in the film. Loudly singing “Baby One More Time” to drive my brother crazy? I remember doing that. It wasn’t until the gadgets started appearing that I realized I’m a bit older than them. I was in high school when the Motorola Razr came out. So I looked it up. I’m 5 years older than the actors that played Mason and Samantha. Still, a lot of their childhood parallels memories I have of growing up in the 90s and 2000s.

One of the first things that struck me was the relationship the siblings had as young children. Like when they were moving from Austin and the kids were kind of hitting each other in the back of the seat. “Make a barrier!” their mom kept saying. They hit each other, then glared, made a barrier and then almost immediately started giggling. It reminded me a lot of my brother and I as children. Like Samantha, I am just about two years older than my brother. When you’re a child that age difference seems vast and miniscule at the same time. Because I was born early in the school year and he was born late in his, we were only one grade apart. I was pretty much always a quiet, shy goody-goody while he was rambunctious and disinterested in academics. I think, like Mason, he felt unfairly compared to me when he would start the school year with a teacher I had had the year before.

Mason and Samantha grew and became able to relate to each other without constantly fighting. That happened with my brother and I as well. There were years where we absolutely couldn’t stand each other (including a time when he carved my name into the wooden bannister to try to get me in trouble. It’s funny to all of us now but holy shit was our Mom pissed). Also, as they went through those horrors with the alcoholic step-dad, their bond grew. You could see that they recognized that, at times, they only had each other and needed to be on the same team. Especially when the adults in their lives weren’t exactly dependable.

Luckily, my brother and I led a pretty happy childhood. Nobody ever threw glasses at us. Now that we are both adults, we realize that we have a relationship we will never share with anyone else in the world. The bond of genetics and shared history. The same sense of humor. My brother lives on the other side of the state now and we only see each other a few times a year. When we do, though, it’s like no time has passed. No one but the other can make us start laughing that quickly. And what we laugh at would strike an outsider as absurdity.

The sibling relationship sparked the biggest nostalgia-wave for me, but it wasn’t the only “madeleine in the tea”, so to speak. My mother got her Masters degree at Saint Martin’s when I was 7 or so and she brought me a few times to sit in her classes, just as Olivia brought Mason. I hadn’t thought about that for years, until I saw that scene and was suddenly transported back to…1995, maybe? Sitting in a hot, chalk-dusty classroom and drawing while the adults talked about things that went way over my head. Unlike Olivia, my mother didn’t marry her professor. A lot of her professors were monks, though, and she was still married to my dad, so I’m not really shocked.

There were many other, smaller aspects of being a kid during that time that the film captured with an authenticity that I think only a movie made in that unique way could. I remember when people smoked in bowling alleys (and restaurants). I lived for Harry Potter Midnight book releases (Ravenclaw for life!). I had the American Apparel track jacket that Mason is wearing on his 15th birthday. Mine was red and I bought it with my first ever paycheck when I was 16. That long, side swiped hair boys used to wear spurs memories of high school crushes. Lots of little things.

Boyhood guided me on a memory tour of my own girlhood, despite the “inspiring”/eye rolling, young adult pseudo-philosophy they laid on so thick at the end (“Like, what does it all mean, maaaaaan”). Maybe not even “despite” that. I thought I was super deep when I was 18, too.