Those Old Emotions

Double nostalgic whammy this week.  First, director John Hughes dies.  Secondly, there’s my high school reunion.

John Hughes was the flashpoint that got me started.  For those outside Generation X, he’s the man responsible for 2 epics that defined my generation: “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Beuller’s Day Off”.

The Breakfast Club showed how we were basically screwed up, and had our parents to blame.  Ferris Beuller taught us that although that may be so, you are still responsible for your actions and to deal with the hand you’re dealt.

Which brings me to my second point: high school reunions.

Reunions are great things if you’re: A) the sports jock B) not the nerd

I should clarify that I didn’t go to the reunion.  I was too busy having my back shaven with a rusty razor by an inebriated hobo.

To confuse matters, I never actually graduated from the school holding the reunion.  I bailed out of my small-town high school to finish in a different city…mainly due to the fact I used up my three strikes and needed a “do-over”.  I’m not bitter…but in all fairness to their pitiable, insignificant lives ( remember, not bitter! ), I REALLY made it difficult for them to be sympathetic to my situation.  But high school ended well, as I graduated in a different city and made friends of whom I have great memories of.  To me, that will always be “going home”.

I should probably also confess that I filled several gas tanks with copious amounts of Pepsi as my parting gift, so it was a good idea to permanently skip town anyway.

But I digress…

The differences in social class and cliques were timelessly portrayed in “The Breakfast Club”.  The movie showed the coming together of many different personalities, and how bonds were built outside the peer-pressure that would normally drive them apart.  It’s a timeless film that defines a generation.

Sometimes I still look back on those days and feel…I really don’t know what.  The newness of youth? Driving down main street with eight people packed into a Ford Mustang yelling out the windows…the girl you fell for ( different one every week! )…staying up all night with friends…being arrested for public nudity and drunken misconduct…

Everything was new and as fresh as my newly grown chest-hair.  Whether it was love, hate, fear, excitement…whatever we felt, we felt it all the way.  There were always the butterflies that quickly fade as you get older.  Maturity demands that it must be so, lest we emulate “The Lord of The Flies”.

Yet although we must mature so we can equip the next generation, there’s times I close my eyes and can still feel the wind in my face as I ride into the next great unknown…only now I have my best friends, my wife and kids to go there with me.

The adventure is just beginning…

“You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But, what we found out is that each one of us is: a brain . . . and an athlete . . . and a basket case . . . a princess . . . and a criminal.

Does that answer your question?
Sincerely yours,

The Breakfast Club”