The best film during this winter week has proved to be an old favorite: Sixteen Candles. Has the rating been amended? It claims to be PG but I’m fairly sure that my mother had to buy our tickets when I first went with Mash and Anne to see it at that grand old theatre in downtown Bremerton in 1984.
I’m sure at the time I identified with the Molly Ringwald character, though looking at the film now I’m not sure why. She is such a whinger – and not at all nice to any of the people around her, except the best friend with the big hair and badass boyfriend. This does not reflect my life at the time; I wasn’t exactly as messed up as the Joan Cusack character in the back brace, but I definitely had no desire to crack the cool crowd or date a hunk.
The only social aspiration I’ve ever had was to be a geek, and they weren’t having me.
This was such a point of sorrow I was compelled to write a zine (not that we used that word back in olden times aka 1983) detailing the social schisms of junior high. With broadly sketched parodies of the school administration thrown in for extra credit. Which I then distributed in the school for three years, as you might imagine creating quite a stir. Without actually gaining any new friends.
Oh, and another point about that movie: when I was growing up the school bus was actively dangerous. The band kids would huddle up front and hope that nobody would pull a knife on them during the journey. The metal kids occupied the back and blasted AC/DC on their ghetto boxes (which is the correct historical term, unfortunately) while carving up the seats.
I sat in the middle and kept my head down except when chatting to a kid who was convinced that if he performed certain rituals Satan would bring him back from the dead after his next suicide attempt. I don’t remember if he was the same kid who liked to nail live kittens to trees.
I never did manage to become an official geek.