Groundhog Day Phil's Love Cave

Phils Love cave

Ground Hog day begins with Phil being an egocentric person.  He is only concerned with himself and feels that everyone and everything should revolve around him.  He finds himself trapped in a day that keeps on repeating itself, and with no way out, he feels he can indulge in a world where there are no consequences. After indulging in his world, Phil finds that there is still something missing from his life.  He tries to make Rita fall in love with him. He tries to remember everything about her.  He gets to know her likes and dislikes.  He finds out what kind of drinks she likes, what she majored in and what eventually made her take the job that she did.  He soon learns more about her like the fact that she likes French poetry and that was actually her major.  He makes a wise remark about her major and sees the look on Rita’s face. 

Thinking to himself that he should not have said that he repeats the event until he gets it right. 

While Phil is trying to get the day he and Rita spend together perfect down to the last detail, Rita still manages to see through him.  Phil was trying to get the day perfect so Rita would sleep with him.  His ultimate goal was not love but sex. 

He finally realizes that his plan to have Rita fall for him in false pretenses was not working, he tries to kill him self.  He feels like there is no escape from this world.  To his surprise he keeps on waking up and repeating the same day all over again.  In one scene he has a conversation with Rita and she tells him that he looks at the world all wrong and that he should look at life like an opportunity.  He senses that there is some truth to this comment Rita makes. 

Phil finds himself getting satisfaction in helping people.  He sees that the world does not revolve around him but he should revolve around the people he has.  He gets to know all the town people; he makes a remarkable news commentary about ground hog and the town’s people.  He catches a kid falling from a tree and comments on it, “No need to thank me kid, I only saved your life and almost broke my back, but don’t worry I will be here tomorrow at the same time to save all over again.”

I think this was the turning point for Phil as he realizes that its not about him anymore or him getting praised for doing things.  He then goes around the town and helps everyone out, not asking for anything in return or even waiting for a thank you.  He starts jacking up a car while the three ladies where inside and they comment to him, “Thank you young man.” Phil responds, “There is no need to thank me I was just around the way with a jack and a spare tire.”  He was doing this just for the simple fact that it was the right thing to do and not wanting any thing in return. 

At the end Phil is playing the piano that took him years to learn.  He is playing at the towns yearly ground hog dance.  Never once in his last day did he make an attempt at Rita.  Rita just came to him.  They start dancing and all the town people start coming up to him thanking him for all his good deeds and he is very modest and doesn’t even go into detail when Rita asks him about it.  Instead he just makes it seem like he has no clue why all these people are thanking him.

At that point Rita falls for Phil, all the town people love him and the ladies are commenting on how good of a catch he is.  The annual singles auction starts and instantly they call Phil up to the front.  He is the town’s hero and women have a bidding war over him.  Rita sees this and out bids them all.  Phil in one scene is outdoors with Rita and carves an ice sculpture of her face.  Rita asks him, “How did you do that?”  Phil tells her, “It’s like if I know every inch of your face.”  The scene breaks and Phil wakes up in bed to the same song but he then sees Rita lying next to him, and he starts looking around and finds that he has finally escaped Groundhog Day.  He starts making out with Rita and she asks him, “Why weren’t you like this last night?” and Phile responds, “Maybe it was because you where so tired from doing all your errands yesterday!”

To me, that was the best part of the movie. Phil finally got it right. The world did not revolve around him and at the end he got Rita.

The Love Cave

The Love Cave

          I was raised by a single-mother of two boys and I was the youngest.  We came to the United States after my Mom had enough of my Father’s infidelity.  He had two other kids with two other women.  I didn’t know this growing up.  All I knew was that my family consisted of my Mom, my Brother, and I.  When we first came to the U.S. from Nicaragua, we jumped from city to city. We started in Miami, went cross-country to Los Angeles and then finally made our way up North and landed in San Francisco, where we stayed until I was 12. 

When we moved to San Francisco, we moved in to a one-bedroom apartment with my Mom’s best friend and her family. We somehow managed to squeeze seven people in it.  I don’t remember much but I know that it didn’t last long.  We soon moved in to our own room that we rented from a family friend.  Our family friend was an older lady that was involved in a Spanish Baptist church. My Mom took us to church one day and we all really enjoyed it and felt at home. At that point, we began practicing Christianity routinely and going to church on a weekly basis. I think that was the beginning of how I came to realize that I was stuck in a love cave.

My Mom always sent us to all the church summer camps, as a way for her to make sure my Brother and I stayed out of trouble since she was always working.  I always remember the Pastor, or the Sunday school teacher, telling us to only date within our own “kind.”  For starters, they meant Latinas. Then they even got more specific by saying we should only date Latin Christian women. They even took it one step further: Latin, Christian, Baptist women where the only ones that I was allowed to date.  I was so young and didn’t know any better. 

I can still remember older gentlemen from church asking me, “So who are you going to marry when you get older?” I would reply, “A Latina of course.” Then they would ask, “ What about a white girl?” My response would always be, “No way.”

I can look back and see how this has always affected my love life. When I was 12 we left San Francisco and moved to this unknown city, San Pablo, which is nestled in the East Bay.  Growing up from 12 to 18 I was in a prominently Latin environment. I mean, the white people were the minority.  All the schools that I went to the race category broke down like this: Latino, Black, Asian, Other, and then White.  White people were less than 5% of the student class. This also had a big affect on my love life.  I’ve only dated Latin women. 

I was in my late teens when I started to see things differently.  I always thought that I would grow up and marry a Latin, Christian, Baptist girl and live happily ever after.  In church, divorce was taboo and infidelity was even worse.  So here I’m getting older and I start to notice that the married couples around me are having problems.  I thought this wasn’t possible.

My Sunday school teacher had an affair with other women and ended up divorcing his wife. This was the man who I looked up to.  I didn’t know what to think.  A few years later, there was a wife and husband that cheated on each other with the spouses of another couple. One of the couple’s ended up getting a divorce and the other couple stayed together.  The couple that stayed together just looked so miserable; you could tell that they only stayed together for their kids. Not for love. 

I was young and so confused about love, relationships and religion.  My faith in God has never gone away but my beliefs that I grew up with were questioned. 

I’m now 32 and single and I don’t think I have had a true happy relationship. Either I find flaw or imperfection in my partner, or I fall for the wrong woman all together.  I’ve never really been able to make sense of it all.  I think now that I’m older I’ve been able to climb out of my cave. I always had puppeteers telling me and showing me only what they wanted and I’ve always felt restrained from whom I could date because of this.  I can now look back into my cave and say that I’m out.