The power of love. Ode to Back to the Future (NOT the typical teenage celebrity crush).

The first time I fell in love was not with someone I ever met.

I was 11 year old when, on a Sunday night, I went to the cinema and saw Back To The Future. It was a revelation. It captured me like only Raiders Of The Lost Arkdid a few years before. But now I was a teenager and there was something more in my excitement: it was love. I fell over heels for Michael J. Fox. Or so I thought at the time.

There was no internet in the eighties, so I kept my antennas up for any article about him. My joy and desperation was a page i teared from a friend’s magazine with a small photo of him and some basic info on his life. A tragic piece, since it revealed he was not 16 as in the film but 24. I was shocked. To an 11 year old, it meant he was a man... an old man! It meant he was out of my league. I could not believe it was true, there must have been a mistake... I was in denial. That information crashed all my romantic dreams.

As if the age gap were the only obstacle to a love story between a shy 6th grader in Rome, who didn’t even speak English, and a Hollywood star.

The first time I fell in love, it was not with an actor. It was with an imaginary boy.

I realize only now I was not really in love with Michael J. Fox. I was in love with Marty McFly.

The skateboard, the electric guitar... the puffy vest (nobody’s perfect). The good guy attitude. An adorable outsider. Marty McFly was the ultimate underdog. The fixer upper with great potential every girl dreams of.

And now I know why the age gap disturbed me so much: it was cold reality breaching in a world of pure imagination. It separated what God, in this case the film director Zemekis, united: the actor and the character, fused forever in a perfect combination. As it only happens in great films.

The first time I fell in love it was not with a person, real or fictional.

Marty McFly embarked on a wonderful quest. Time travel, mad scientist, car chases, rock' n' roll, school romance. Back To The Futurewas storytelling at its purest and most powerful. The magic of that tale hit me hard and changed me for ever. After that film, nothing felt the same. Now that I, vicariously, lived such an adventure, I could not settle for less than that.

I came back home with a mix of excitement and depression, typical of who’s in love. The classic “I love him but he doesn’t know I exist” thing. But there was more, much more. I was fascinated and electrified by the adventures I saw on screen. At the same time I felt so sharp the contrast with my life. My whole existence appeared so boring and uneventful now. Just the old school-home-dinner routine. I would never really experience an adventure like the one of Marty. I would never travel through time. Never hang out with a mad scientist. Never introduce kids to rock 'n' roll. I would never feel so alive.

I briefly peeked into another, fantastical, dimension and the withdrawal was hard. Reality felt dull.

As every teenager I was idealistic, absolutist and I felt everything deeply. I wanted it all, no half measures. Life had to be a fantastical, thrilling adventure, or it was not life at all. Compromise meant death.

How could I wake up every morning to such an ordinary existence? It was unbearable. I wanted the extraordinary. I wanted night ambushes, car chases, secret plans, school dances and lightning. Adventure, mystery, drama, romance.

And I knew where I could find them.

The first time I fell in love, it was with cinema.