The depressing future for Kevin McCallister from "Home Alone"

First off, for those that just climbed out of the bomb shelter they entered back in 1989, Home Alone is a movie about a boy, Kevin McCallister, who defeats two burglars with ingenuity after his family leaves him behind while they travel to the one hotel in Paris that actually has a view of the Eiffel Tower.

Also the Cold War ended, the USSR is no more, Princess Diana died, The Simpsons is still on the air, South Africa traded in the horrors of apartheid for the horrors of gang rape, Bono of U2 inexplicably became Man of The Year once and the new Star Wars movies sucked despite costing more than the Manhattan Project to produce.

Oh and something called Here Comes Honey BooBoo just exists. No one knows why.

Okay, now the actor behind Kevin McCallister, Macaulay Culkin, went on to have a good life. I mean he had an acclaimed theater run then went on to find true love which makes your life a "win" even if a sentient computer program exterminated all humans except you just so it could torment you for its own amusement.

Hey, ever notice that Harlan Ellison is sort of a downer?

Anyways, things would not be so good for the character of Kevin McCallister after things were over and here are why I think this would be so.



Hello Special Forces

Here is a list of the booby traps set up by Kevin with only one night and day for preparation (courtesy of http://homealone.wikia.com/wiki/Booby_Traps):

• Kevin shoots Harry in the testicles and Marv in the skull with Buzz's air rifle.
• Harry slips on the front steps that have been iced (twice). He eventually uses the railing for a support.
• Marv slips down the basement steps (like a slide) that have been iced.
• Marv, when turning on what he thinks is a light switch, instead pulls an iron down the laundry chute and smashes him in the face.
• Harry's hand gets burned by the doorknob, leaving a monogrammed 'M' on his hand.
• Marv steps on tar and ends up stepping on a nail barefoot, and falls back downstairs.
• Harry's head gets burned by a blowtorch when entering through the back door.
• Marv steps on an ornament while still barefoot (Then thinks he's gonna kill Kevin).
• Harry gets glue on his face and gets blasted with pillow feathers.
• Both Harry and Marv slip on Micro Machines.
• They get hit with paint cans while going up the stairs.
• Harry runs into a rope and lands on his back.
• Kevin puts Buzz's pet tarantula, Axl on Marv's face making him scream.
• Harry gets hit with a crowbar by Marv, who was trying to kill Axl.
• They try to glide across a rope to Kevin's treehouse but Kevin cuts the rope sending them to the ground after Harry and Marv crash into the side of the house.

Replace the micro machines with bamboo spikes, air rifle with a M24 sniper rifle and the tarantula with....well a poisonous spider and this reads more like the resume of someone named Scorpion Eater we'd send up against Jason Bourne. With these kinds of skills to quickly inflict mayhem Kevin would have been off to boot camp at age 18, recruited into a branch of the government that doesn't officially exist, parachuted into Serbia in 1999 and today is only remembered by a star on the wall in CIA headquarters.

But those Serbian grunts probably sure questioned their sanity when they ran into a booby trap of falling clothes irons and paint cans out in the woods.

Kevin becomes a terrorist

But suppose he actually makes it out of Serbia alive? He'd be plenty pissed about being disavowed by his government. And with those skills of his the corrupt congressman that sold him out would sure have a surprise coming when they suffer a series of humorous but tortuous escapades. Even if they lived the newspaper headlines outlining how you lost your testicles to a remote control toy monster truck would probably kill your career and self esteem.

And Kevin wouldn't even necessarily need to be wronged by the government to go down this route.

Kevin becomes a criminal

Remember when you were eight years old? Now imagine that at that tender age you had somehow managed to outwit two adults. Granted these were not particularly smart adults (I'm thinking the cost/benefit analysis of just leaving the McCallister home burglary free was lacking).

But if you did imagine the empowerment?

You'd probably never listen to an adult again. I mean what did they do except abandon you and not listen to you again and again (remember they also send him to New York accidentally)? After this experience you basically have someone with the skills of MacGyver with the maturity of........well a kid. And while rigging your teacher's seat to emit fart noises with paper clips and duct tape is probably fun at first how long would it be before you move onto more sinister things? How long until you start selling those services to people with suspiciously cute nicknames and white power tattoos?

How long is it until your mugshot is on an FBI watchlist? Hell for all we know the FBI has a special list just for mechanically inclined kids that might be trouble in the future.

And if that's the case then imagine how quickly Kevin would just disappear after September 11th only to "mysteriously" reappear in a supermax prison?

Kevin kills himself

Back to the issue of empowerment of an eight year old by vanquishing adults. How do you top that?  Add on that his family basically ignored him prior to these events and you have a recipe for emotional problems.

Kevin is basically on a one way street to depression. Best case scenario he ends up in an art college penning poems about anguish. Worst case scenario he takes out his neglectful family with an atom bomb made out of discarded smoke detectors.