No Matter How Your Heart Breaks, In The End You Grow Up And You Walk Away

When I heard the news, I sat at my desk listening to OMD and getting teary. Embarrassing. This is far worse than Michael Jackson, I thought. Then I went home and watched selected scenes from Uncle Buck.

We were pre-teens when most of his stuff came out, and so I'd be lying if I said that those films were my life. But they were still ours. We watched them in our friends' dens on VHS, devouring them at slumber parties, reciting lines the next Monday at school. They were our Bibles of Teendom. They gave us something to look forward to. The days we'd spend playing hooky, the parties we'd crash thrown by the popular kids. (When I was 13, I thought that all high school parties would be that crowded, that there would be many, many girls smoking and wearing porkpie hats.)

The school dances and the boys with cars and even detention where we'd dance with the jocks, and the smokers, and the preppies, and the nerds. Working in a record shop with a woman who dressed like Cindy Lauper.

We imagined that everything would be perfect, that we'd all have our happy high school ending, soundtracked by the best British bands. But sometimes the script changes.

Andie and Duckie enter the ballroom. Blane goes over to shake Duckie's hand. Andie says he doesn't need to apologize to her. She and Duckie step onto the dance floor. They both admit that they cannot dance, but they begin to anyway. They don't care what anyone else thinks of them.

John Hughes gave us a lifetime of angst and heartbreak to look forward to.

It was amazing, John.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.