I watched Ghostbusters as a kid. Of course I did. Everyone did. It was one of those movies that just existed in the atmosphere of being a child in the late 80s and early 90s. You absorbed it through proximity even if nobody sat you down and pressed play. But here’s the thing — I didn’t really get Ghostbusters as a kid. I liked the proton packs and Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man and all the stuff that a kid is supposed to like. The actual movie, though — the dry humor, the timing, the fact that Bill Murray is essentially refusing to take the apocalypse seriously while everyone else is losing their minds — that didn’t click until later.

Later, specifically, was when Sarah and I got married.

We were young and broke and figuring out how to be married people, which is a weird thing to figure out because nobody tells you that being married is mostly just deciding what to eat for dinner every night forever. And somewhere in those early days we watched Ghostbusters together. Probably on DVD. Probably on a Tuesday. And it just became ours.

I don’t know how else to explain it. Some movies become relationship movies. Not because they’re romantic — Ghostbusters is emphatically not romantic unless you count Peter Venkman’s deeply questionable courtship of Dana Barrett — but because you watch them together enough times that the movie becomes shorthand. Inside jokes. Call and response. A shared language built out of quotes that you deploy in everyday life with zero context and total understanding.

“Ghostbusters! What do you want!!” is something that gets said in our house at least once a week. Janine Melnitz didn’t know she was writing the script for how we answer the phone when we’re annoyed, but here we are.

We watch it every Halloween. It’s not Halloween without it. Some people have Hocus Pocus. Some people have the Nightmare Before Christmas discourse about whether it’s a Halloween or Christmas movie. We have Ghostbusters. We have Ghostbusters II. We have snacks and the couch and thirty-plus years of combined viewings and we still laugh at the same parts.

And speaking of Ghostbusters II — I will not tolerate the slander. I know the general consensus is that the sequel is lesser. I know it didn’t hit the same cultural moment. I do not care. Peter McNicol as Janosz is one of the most unhinged performances in a major studio film and I am grateful for it every single day. The way he delivers every line like he’s simultaneously terrified and aroused by Vigo the Carpathian is art. It’s just art.

And then there’s Peter Venkman on World of the Psychic. The opening of the second movie is maybe my favorite scene in either film. Bill Murray interviewing guests about the end of the world on a low-budget cable access show, completely checked out, barely maintaining the illusion that he cares, and then just casually telling his audience “…so, we’ve got that going for us.” The whole bit is a masterclass in comic timing and I will rewind it multiple times every viewing. Sarah doesn’t even comment on it anymore. She just waits.

And the museum scene. When they’re looking up at the painting of Vigo and Peter says he’s “just suffering Carpathian kitten loss” — that he’s just missing his kitten. I lose it every time. Every. Time. There are almost too many good quotes in these movies. Every rewatch I catch another line delivery I missed or a background reaction from Harold Ramis or Dan Aykroyd that makes the scene even better.

Which brings me to the wall.

Louis Tully — played by the incomparable Rick Moranis — has this line where he tells the Ghostbusters to “stay sharp, keep fit, make good decisions.” It’s a throwaway motivational line from a man who is fundamentally unequipped to motivate anyone, and Sarah and I latched onto it immediately. We decided to put it on our wall. In big letters. A daily reminder from our accountant turned Keymaster turned honorary Ghostbuster.

We put up “Keep Sharp, Stay Fit, Make Good Decisions.”

Which is wrong.

We got the words out of order. We didn’t realize it until it was already up there. And you know what? It stays. It stays because that’s somehow more us than the actual quote. We loved it so much we couldn’t even get it right and that feels extremely on brand.

Now look, the newer Ghostbusters movies exist and I have seen all of them and I have feelings. The original is a perfect movie. I don’t say that lightly. The writing, the cast chemistry, the way it balances comedy and genuine stakes — it shouldn’t work as well as it does but it is lightning in a bottle.

The 2016 one with Kate McKinnon is a different beast entirely. It’s sillier, more slapstick, and it doesn’t really try to match the tone of the originals. And that’s fine. Kate McKinnon licking her proton gun is its own kind of energy and I respect it. It’s not my Ghostbusters but I enjoyed it for what it was.

The newer continuation movies — Afterlife and Frozen Empire — are interesting because they directly connect to the originals, which is what everyone wanted, but they’re also much more family-oriented. They’re kids-discover-the-legacy movies, and they’re sweet, and they’re fine. But they don’t have the same anarchic energy. They can’t. The original Ghostbusters worked because a bunch of comedians who didn’t give a shit were handed a blockbuster and played it like a hangout movie where the apocalypse was an inconvenience. You can’t manufacture that. You can honor it, which the new movies do, but you can’t recreate it.

And honestly? That’s okay. Because Sarah and I still have the originals. We still have Halloween. We still have “Ghostbusters! What do you want!!” We still have a misquoted Louis Tully on our wall, reminding us to keep sharp, stay fit, and make good decisions — in whatever order feels right.

The man eating toaster in the second one still rules, by the way. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.

Stay sharp. Or keep sharp. Whatever.