One of my favourite films growing up was Parenthood , a Ron Howard comedy which follows a few months in the lives of the Buckman family. Steve Martin is Gil Buckman, a stressed father who is trying to hold it all together. Towards the end of the film he is having an argument with his wife about yet another crisis: she's pregnant, he's just quit his job, and they're both scared about the future. At this point Grandma wanders in and tells an apparently unconnected story about going to a theme park as a young woman, while the Buckmans smile with polite exasperation. She describes the experience of going on the roller coaster, which was unpredictable, unnerving, terrifying, thrilling and exciting all at once. Some people preferred the merry-go-round, she explains, but that just goes up and down. She preferred the roller coaster - you get more out of it. As she wanders off, Karen Buckman exclaims that she's a smart lady. Gil is less impressed: "I was all confuse