HAE seen this depressing scene as a kid and thought "I will end up like this when I grow up"? I ended up like that, but it gets even scarier... The movie was The Kid by Disney

That scene I remembered is actually a merger of two scenes from the movie, and my child brain carved out an incredibly depressing memory out of both. 

The setting is the scene where his dad is tactlessly scolding him for physically responding to a bully, but in the process lets out that mom has terminal cancer, and blames she getting ill on his son's misbehaving. The dad walks out of the scene, and the adult self walks in to reassure and hug him.

My brain then morphed another scene's dialogue on it: that where the kid finds out his adult self hasn't accomplished none of his dreams (pilot licence, wife, dog), and mumbles at him "I'll grow up to be loser". 

The result is that I've always had this vague memory of a scene where the adult self knees down, holds his younger self arms in his hands, looks at him in the eyes and says **"I'm sorry, you'll grow up to be a loser"**

The relatability of this is frightening. I watched this in the early 2000s when I was like 7, my dad always behaved quite similarly to his, my mum had already completed her first chemo round but would pass away years later out of a resurgence. Later I knew that at that earlier time he apparently was blaming it on my brother's tantrums.

In the meantime I truly grew up to be a loser, with not much reasons to live, having spent my younger years not understanding how to be around people, and eventually burning out of most interests and activities between high school and uni.

Turned out it might have been because of recently diagnosed autism and attention disorder, and I can't rule out my parents were on some spectrum of sorts too.

By the way I'm kinda shocked such a deep meaningful movie was targeted to kids, while it's clearly all from the point of view of adults.

Posted Sep 5, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

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