Damn You Teen Movies!!!

Fighting Nun just does not get my preoccupation with teen movies. And to be honest, I'm not sure I get it either. Why is it that I’m a Sixteen-Candles-adoring, What-ever-saying, Empire-Records quoting, Jake-Ryan-wanting, Molly-Ringwald-wannabe (Seriously, I’ve dressed like Claire from Breakfast Club for Halloween three years running. Why? Because somehow I had the exact outfit she wore in my closet. Don’t ask. I have no idea how that happened.)? I watched them in my adolescence because they were funny and cute, and because they had John Cusack in them and life was good. But in my post-adolescence, I’m not sure why I’m still obsessed with them. I like to think that I’m clinging on to some kind of cine-nostalgia or something.

But then I read this. Then everything started making sense. No, I was never at a party like this. I pretty much never went to a party in high school. (Let me just say that accidentally running over a poodle that turned out to be the stoner’s unofficial mascot in my school can reek havoc on your social life). And when I did go, it was nothing like this at all. Being snubbed by the volleyball team, ignored by the football team because they were too busy doing keg stands and basically being relegated to the D&D section of the party because they were the only ones who would talk to me? No way to live out your adolescent partying fantasies. Also, sneaking around in the desert, getting your clothes torn up on mesquite bushes because cops in our small, no stop-light town had nothing better to do than to descend on the only decent party of the year like a pack of rabid hyenas who have just found a three-day-old zebra carcass? Also no way to live your adolescent partying fantasies. Going home before curfew because watching late-night movies on HBO beat any idea of a good time you and your friends could come up with on a Saturday night? Also no way to live out your adolescent party fantasies. (But thanks to HBO late night, I caught Zebrahead, which may or may not explain a couple of things about my life, including my obsession with redheads. Micheal Rappaport, call me!)

But I don’t think it’s just the 80’s movie partying fantasies that went unfulfilled that has me obsessed with teen movies. I think it’s the skewed view of romance portrayed in a lot of the teen movies 1980 to present that has me so screwed up. Don’t get me wrong. Fighting Nun knows romance. The man knows how to work the angles to, you know, get what he wants if you know what I'm sayin'. But the romance in the relationship is also tempered with this unfettered childlike amusement he has when it comes to picking on me that is best summed up in the following exclamation: “Penis in the face! Penis in the face! Gah! Penis in the Mouth! Penis in the eye!” But I don’t think it’s the current level of romance in my relationship versus that in movies that makes me sad, it’s that I didn’t have that kind of awesome good-girl-gets-the-hot-guy, Jake-Ryan-picks-me-up-in-his-car-on-my-birthday, John-Cusack-blairs-Peter-Gabriel-out-of-a-boom-box, AJ-promises-to-come-to-Boston-even-after-I-threw-myself-at-Rex-Manning, Preston-writes-me-an-awe-inspiring-utterly-sweet-letter, Seth-Green-hits-on-me-and-we-end-up-making-it-on-the-bathroom-floor kind of tempestuous love affair. Where the fuck was the guy who was willing to learn French for me when I went to high school? Where the hell is the guy who I wanted to continue language lessons with? Why the Hell couldn’t I have been a Sparks to somebody’s Eric Stoltz when I was in high school? Where was my Paul Rudd? That's what I want to know! Oh yeah, that’s right, he was Non-fucking-existent!!! There wasn’t a guy like that in my high school, not anywhere close. O.k. a few were kinda close, but they always had girlfriends who weren’t me and never even showed that they might even be a little bit interested in me. And the rest of the guys at my school, the single guys, who were interested in me? Let’s just say I had an unspoken rule with myself never to date anyone in my school who I knew for a fact ate paste in kindergarten. That ruled out every other available guy to me, and quite a few of the female persuasion, you know, if I had actually decided to go that route. The one guy from my school that I decided to date (only because he moved to my town sophomore year so I had no physical evidence that he had eaten paste so he was worth a shot) “accidentally” spit his gum down my dress at prom junior year so he could fish it out. On the dance floor. (Interesting side note to that story. Said guy is, if my sources are to be believed still in the same area, possibly a tweaker. Which, yeah. Man do I know how to pick 'em.)

To be fair, I totally got that guy in college, and that guy turned into Fighting Nun and he has hit all the right notes since the consequently, which makes my life better than the movies. That's right fuckers! I said it!

So I guess I totally blew my chances at the awesome, only-in-movies teenage romance when I was a teenager, but that’s only because the movies set the bar so damn high that normal adolescent tomfoolery seemed unworthy somehow. Damn you teen movies!!! Why’d you have to screw me up like that?