Would you really want to be ‘17 Again’?

For one day last year I got to be “17 Again,” like the main character in the movie of that title. OK, I didn’t really go back in time, but I did unexpectedly spend around 24 hours in the mindset I had at that age.

It started when I learned a friend of mine was working with my old high-school crush and it hit me that Crush Girl might be a good source for a magazine article I was writing. Talking to her, I figured, would also give me the chance to right an old wrong. Back then, I’d been too nervous and lacked confidence to say much to her and I’d always regretted it. But now that I was reasonably successful and still looked pretty decent, this time would be different.

Except it wasn’t.

As soon as I heard Crush Girl’s voice mail, all the old teenage anxieties flooded back. I really did feel 17 again. My positive thoughts (see above) sounded like a Stuart Smalley pep talk. Sure, I’ve had some success, but it’s not that impressive. And yeah, I look OK, but I wasn’t exactly Brad Pitt to begin with, was I?

But wait. The adult me isn’t a self-doubting George Costanza. A few months earlier, I’d had no problem talking to another high-school crush, Deborah Harry, for an interview. So hitting it off with the world-famous Blondie came easy, yet here I was sweating over Ms. Teen Crush.

Hollywood taps into these conflicted feelings we have about our teenage selves in films such as “17 Again.” You can see the love-hate relationship adults have with their pasts played out again and again in similar movies such as “Freaky Friday” (both versions), “13 Going on 30,” “Peggy Sue Got Married,” “18 Again,” “Like Father, Like Son” and all three “Back to the Futures.” These movies tap into our desire to be young again and play on our fear of what might happen if we really did go back.

Video   Zac Efron at '17 Again' premiere April 15: "17 Again" star Zac Efron stops to chat with Access about hosting "SNL" and the recent "Jonny Quest" rumors. Access Hollywood

Between my Crush Girl experience and seeing previews for “17 Again,” I wondered why it’s those teen years that stir up such emotions. I mean, why not childhood, the era Sigmund Freud claimed all our problems stemmed from? Or why don’t films have characters go back to their 20s when most people get married? To get answers, I sought out opinions from experts in an assortment of areas of teendom.

The first person I tapped was the most obvious: the screenwriter for “17 Again,” Jason Filardi. Filardi says he chose the age of 17 for his character because he “always thought there was a movie in the saying, ‘If only I knew then what I know now.’” He says his film centers on a character at 17 because “it’s about going back to a time in your life where you make some decisions that really foretell which direction your life is going to take.”

Filardi also admits that for him personally, those years were the most fun. So he’d want to go back, then, you’d assume? Uh, not exactly. “I wouldn’t want to be 17 again because of the awkwardness of it all,” he admits. “From the pimples to thinking you’re too cool to show feelings to girls because you think it’s weak.”

Wow, who would ever do that (cough, cough)? Anyway, I asked Filardi if he ever wishes he could go back and redo something from those days. Would he change a hasty decision, like he has his “17 Again” character do? Were there any affairs (ahem) he didn’t pursue?

Uh, no, he says. But he wishes he hadn’t broken his thumb during baseball season: “I always wanted to go on and play college baseball. In my senior year I was the captain of the baseball team.”

No thanks for the memories
Ah yes, captain of the baseball team. Gee, what a shock. Not. My younger brother was captain of the baseball team. And a few years after I struggled to come up with an opening line for Crush Girl (which I never did find), he happened to meet her little sis and they started dating. Immediately. I never felt competitive with him later in life, but this one incident always bugged me.

But, hey, lucky for me, my feelings are totally normal! Or so says David Rubin, a Duke University professor of psychology and neuroscience. The Harvard University graduate coined the phrase “autobiographical memory bump” to explain why studies showed our adolescent and post-adolescent memories carry the most significance for us.

Video   Efron on '17 Again' April 15: Actors Zac Efron and Matthew Perry discuss their new comedy "17 Again." NBC News Channel

We remember those years so well, Rubin says, because we do so many things for the first time then, like drive a car or fall in love. He says he also sees this “bump” in autobiographies. So if our memories are that vivid, maybe we really do want to go back. What about you, doc?

“No,” he states emphatically, but with a laugh. “I teach at a college and see these guys and I see what they’re going through. It was a wonderful, exciting time, but it’s not the easiest time of one’s life.”

But looking back on age 17 is about more than funhouse mirror memories, says Dr. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist and author at Rutgers University. Because of the way the brain develops in adolescence, we actually experience more intense emotions, she says, and so we get more intense memories.

“The cognitive areas (of the brain) are not fully developed until late teenage years, and of course, social relationships are certainly not well developed,” notes Fisher, who is also an author. “And (teenagers) have not yet fully developed all the cognitive processes to deal with these strong emotions. They have no skill set from experience. So the emotions are sort of rattling around being profound and thus we remember them.”

Fisher also adds that although she had some good times at 17, she wouldn’t go back. She cites dealing with “too much passion, too much anguish and too much panic over school work” as the reason.

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