It all started with our 8-year-old daughter. She was listening to Bruno Mars' song "Just the Way You Are" over and over and over, when suddenly she got this dreamy look in her eyes. In a mushy and ethereal voice, she said:
"I can't wait to have a boyfriend ..."
(I added the ellipsis to emphasize the dreaminess of it.) Ah, to be young, hopeful and naive. As the soul-crushing mother that I am, I immediately told her that real-life boyfriends are nothing like that catchy and quite wonderful song. I've also been informing her since kindergarten that boys don't get interested in girls as soon as girls get interested in boys.
Part of me felt like a jerk. Who was I to crush my sweet daughter's innocent dreams? Her mother, that's who. Her mother who was once a starry-eyed teen and tween who "learned" about love from 80s movies and two happily-married parents. How was I supposed to negotiate hormones and crushes with those as my examples? It's no wonder I didn't date anyone seriously until college.
What does this have to do with John Cusack? A lot. As I bitched to my husband that night (and, let's face it, it was bitching), I came to the realization that 80s movies lied to us all and made us believe in things that didn't exist. Case in point: Lloyd Dobler.
For those who don't know or remember, Lloyd Dobler was John Cusack's character in the movie Say Anything .... He was the guy who was so in love with Ione Skye's character Diane Court that he stood outside below her window, holding up a giant boombox* playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes."
If I had been a high school guy in 1989, I would have been pissed. How was any guy supposed to live up to that? At the the time, I was smitten. I was already a fan of John Cusack's since I saw him in The Sure Thing, Better Off Dead, Stand By Me and One Crazy Summer (more on those later). He often played the underdog, which was appealing in itself. (I was never one for the jock types.) But when he lifted that cassette-playing stereo in the air because he really, really cared, that was it.
#liferuiner before hashtags existed and number signs were still number signs.
So there's Lloyd Dobler, who didn't want to sell or buy anything processed or process anything sold or bought, who devoted his whole self to one girl. As romantic as it seemed then, it actually sounds pretty creepy now. But I still wish someone would have made a grand gesture like that for me once upon a time.
Not that there weren't gestures in my time. My husband used to make me mix CDs. My boyfriend in college wrote me a shoebox full of letters one summer (that was back before email and texting, you know, during the times of the Pony Express). They just weren't grand.
Maybe there's still hope for society, though. The youngsters of today are all about the grand. Choreographed wedding proposals, choreographed wedding party numbers, and promposals (seriously?). It's worthwhile to note that Bruno Mars songs are often part of these, too.
What do you think? Is romance dead on the vine or alive on Vine? Did 80s movies shape how you saw the world? And how's that working out for you? Let me know in the comments below.
-M.
Want to learn more about the location where that iconic scene from Say Anything... was filmed, check out iamnotastalker.com.
*Boombox - A larger-the-better portable music device powered by multiple "C" batteries or a cord that plugged into a power outlet. They transmitted things called radio stations and played cassette tapes, the popular predecessor of CDs and waaay before digital music.
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