One of my more popular blogs I wrote on here, as well as posted on the This Is by Us website, was the Sociological Ramifications of The Breakfast Club. My main point in writing was to highlight some of the issues the movie brings up, specifically as a teenager, a trying period for some, confusing for others, and unforgettable for most, and how we react and respond in those situations. If The Breakfast Club represented a conglomeration of teen emotions, which movie represents age and innocence? There is only one movie which comes to mind. Of course, I'm talking about Stand by Me, a movie which conjures up nostalgic memories from you childhood no other movie can come close to.
If you are one of the 32 people who have not seen Stand by Me, let me give you brief synopsis of the movie real quick. After overhearing Verne's older brother tell his buddies about a missing person and planning on finding him, he and his three buddies, Gordie, Chris, and Teddy, childhood friends, set out on a separate journey in hopes of doing so before the elder kids. Along the way, they get into various predicaments, such as leeches on their dongs, trying out run a train on a bridge, and of course, an infamously gross campfire tale.
It's been well documented in my blogs the Karate Kid is my favorite 80's movie of all-time; I love it. Also, in my blogs, I wrote, and stand by the proclamation, The Breakfast Club is the quintessential 80's movie ever. I want to make another decree: there is no other movie which symbolizes youth, innocence, and coming of age better than Stand by Me, not just in the 80's, but of all-time. I don't want to satirize the movie, like I did with Road House, and I don't want to go into details about the plot, nit-picking and critiquing what happened throughout the movie, because I still have a problem with them using John Cusack as a tragic figure. Stand by Me wasn't just a wonderful movie, no, it has more meaning and represents a time in each of our lives when things weren't as complex and confusing as they are when you get older.
(As I write this, I am going to recall the times and adventures when I was a little Steven; so just bear with me and hopefully I don't lose you around the 7th paragraph….ok? Ok.)
"If could only have one food to eat for the rest of my life? That's easy. Pez. Cherry flavored Pez. No question about it". In what is possibly one of the most asked questions as a kid, and what is probably the same type of response we give as a kid, this question sums up a lot about youth, especially with me, although I would have chosen pepperoni pizza. But the simplicity in the nature of the answer is what I am talking about, growing up, we didn't know any better. How many times, growing up did you ask your parents if you could eat just one thing for dinner, whether it'd be candy, cake, ice cream, etc. Hell, I did that all the time, I always wanted to eat pizza, and in a way, that's why to this day I can eat it everyday. Does any rational person want to eat cherry flavored Pez everyday for the rest of their life? Probably not, but that's just the thing, as a child we often did and said irrational things, and the movie, with this simple line, reflects those instances. Now, maybe if they had sour Pez that would be a different story.
Don't get me started with some of the things I have done as a kid growing up, and, even, sadly, to this day I still do irrational things, some of you know this all too well. The things I did as a kid could be a fictional best-seller, but you know what? I don't have any regrets…well, that might be a lie because I do have a few regrets, but, as in life, you learn as you go: life lessons as they are called. Specifically looking at the movie, when the kids are going through the water and they discover themselves covered in leeches, they immediately run out of the water, with Gordie damn near running on water. Looking back at the movie, sure they knew there might be leeches in the water, but did they ever expect leeches to actually be there? No way, they're kids! Kids do some of dumbest things, Lord knows I did. But, I am sure after they got out of there and pulled the leeches off they learned their lesson.
Life has a funny way of teaching lessons to people, especially as a kid. One lesson I learned growing up was never to talk back to my mom. She just didn't take back-talk from us as kids; now we can get away with it a little more, as long as we keep it relatively in jest. I remember one time I said something pretty bad to her (I can't remember what exactly), but I remember her taking a belt and tanning my ass until it looked like ripe tomato. That day I learned Connie doesn't play that. There are only a few things in this world I am afraid of: Jesus H. Christ, Keyser Soze, and if snakes were people, them, but my mom is on that list. The lesson: don't piss her off; bad things happen, I guess that's why our relationship is the way it is.
Sometimes kids have the best conversations, and even to this day I still have some pretty off the wall questions, just last week I wondered, in a bulletin on MySpace, how did Skeletor talk without his jaw falling off because he was made up of only bones, how did he do that without muscles, ligaments, and tendons to hold his jaw together. Fortunately, my friend Crystal explained how he did it, to which we argued the complexities of movie villains in today's cinema. ANYWAY, as I was saying, kids have some of the best conversations; in the movie the guys are wondering what animal Goofy is. Donald is a duck, Mickey is a mouse, Pluto is a dog…but what the hell is Goofy? Like Chris says, "he wears a hat and drives a car." Again, another one of those mysteries in life…
This is just one instance, another is when the kids are debating who would win between Super Man and Mighty Mouse to which the kids argue back and forth until someone rationalized Super Man being a real person, opposed to Mighty Mouse being a cartoon, which is a valid point. See, the point isn't whether which super hero would win a fight; it shows the conversations and thoughts we have as little kids; not whether we want to go to college, what we want from our lives, or what the world is coming to. Things change as you get older, which is why they call it growing up.
The types of shenanigans and tomfoolery the kids played with each was another classic example of growing up. One of the most underrated games in all of life is "2 for flinching". Everyone has played it, I've played it, you've played it, your parents played it, and I am willing to bet the apostles even played in some way or another. It's a simple game, if you flinch when someone fake punches you, then you get punched twice. Really, it's just an awesome game. As I grew up though I stopped playing this game, signaling a time of growth and maturity, interestingly enough though, my buddy AJ and I would play a similar game to "2 for Flinching" as college seniors sitting in Introduction to The Gospels class. If you made a circle with your index finger and thumb and showed it below your waist to another player, then you got to pull an Ike Turner and hit your buddy as hard as you wanted to on the arm, granted they looked. If they blocked it with the hand sign over their eye, they got to punch you (yes, I was 21 years old at the time).
All these things, in addition to getting bullied around by the older kids happen in life. Just about everyone has, and was, bullied in one form or another; consider it a rite of passage. Some got bullied badly, others just had their balls busted by older people, who may or may have not been friends. Ace and his buddies represent those times in our lives, but they were legitimate assholes, especially when he took Gordie's Yankees baseball cap his older brother gave him. But, being bullied and picked on as little kids in merely a minor portrayal in the movie and childhood, no, the main point is, incidentally, the last lines in the movie, after Chris has been shot and Gordie is reminiscing all these times with his childhood buddies.
"Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant". This is so true. As we get older we move on, things change in our lives, we have different tastes, styles, and personalities. As is shown in the movie closing, Gordie says what happens to his friends as they get older and move on from elementary to junior high school. The kids start to grow apart, not because of any certain event, or cause, but because, often times, that's what happens to us in life. We move on, some for better, others… not so much. I am guilty of this, I used to have two best friends when I was growing up; I thought we would be friends forever, live next door to each other, and have our kids grow up. We both thought that, but as what happens in life, things change and people change and sometimes it just doesn't work out the way you plan it. That's what the movie is trying to show: change.
See, when you are 12 years old, the only thing that matters to you is your friends. You don't really care about what personal problems they have with their parents (such as the kids did in the movie), you don't care what race they are, you don't care what religious affiliation they are, how much money they have, what car they drive, how they dress, anything. The only thing that matters is they are your friend and you would do anything for them, even at 12 years old. At that age, innocence is the greatest virtue, not to say everything they do is innocent because Lords know I was swearing by then and making fun of my friends, but that's what the movie shows by giving it an "R" rating; if it was a PG movie, or even PG-13 movie, the impact wouldn't have been as great, but the movie, stylistically speaking, was done perfect.
I haven't kept in touch with very many friends from my childhood, and yeah I think about what they're up to nowadays, or what they have done with their lives. I wonder what would happen if I saw them out one night, would we grab a beer together, what? Maybe dumb luck one night will put us in the same spot sometime and then we can catch up. Like one of the last line in the movie says, "I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve, Jesus, does anyone?" The answer: no, not because the friends you meet later on in life are lesser than your childhood ones, but because those days of age, youth, and innocence are gone. Sometimes, I wish we could bring those days back. So, if you excuse me I think I'm gonna' go play the original Nintendo when I get home…until next week.
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