Better Off Dead

"Gee, I'm really sorry your mom blew up, Ricky."

If you count all the high school students John Cusack played, then he was in high school from 1984-1990, from Sixteen Candles to Say Anything. No one seemed to notice at the time.

Cusack's extended stay at the high school level happened during formative years for me, and I suppose I have him to thank, at least in part, for how I turned out. If I didn't have John Cusack ahead of me from my 5th grade year until, well, now, then I'm not sure where I'd be or what I would be like. Cusack is sort of like the older brother I never met, but just saw in home movies.

Thanks to teen comedies, I had many misconceptions about what high school would be like. After I saw Better Off Dead, I thought maybe I'd have a Camaro, learn to ski, and maybe even meet a nice French foreign exchange student. I thought maybe I'd do a lot of things I saw John Cusack do in movies.

His characters always seemed immune to the brutal high school social hierarchy. He was neither a prep nor a jock, neither a nerd nor a stoner, neither a hood nor a band dork. He was just...Lane Meyer. Hoops McCann. Lloyd Dobler. Everyone liked him. He fit in wherever. People trusted him. He rose above all of it. He had a car. He got the girl. He was cool, but not too cool. All I wanted, more than anything, was to just be immune, rise above it all, and hell yes, get a cute girl to go out with me.

Instead, I turned out to be a huge dork with coke bottle glasses and got all the way through high school without a single threat to my virginity. No French foreign exchange student showed up to speak with me the, how you say, international language of love. I was not granted the opportunity to put my testicles tentacles on her, or anyone else for that matter.

[Note: That's a reference to the movie. I hope you see what I'm doing there. No one promised you a family blog. And no, I do not have tentacles.]

Most disappointingly, I never got that Camaro, and I kinda want a do-over now that I have a credit rating.

Even though Better Off Dead came out in 1985, I actually didn't see this film until 1988, my sixth grade year, when for some reason my middle school administrators decided to show this to the entire school in the cafeteria on the last day before a break. I can't remember whether this was before the holiday break or summer or some other time, and that doesn't matter really. Point being, they showed this at my school. (My school also showed Back to the Future and The Last Emperor. That's not a typo. I'll let you ponder.)

I could write some treatise about the downfall of a public school system that shows Better Off Dead. I could make lots of arguments as to why that's not pedagogically sound. I could, but...no.

I'm thankful that my school turned me on to this film. Most of the jokes don't work anymore, and the structure is all out of whack and random jokes seem to flutter through for no real reason. There's no semblance of realism here. But who cares?

I laughed then. I smile a lot now. That's all I want.

Well, I wouldn't mind having this, too.