Like most of my friends growing up, I went to private school all the way through high school. I never got to appreciate the concept of wearing comfortable clothes to class until I got to college.
I thankfully had a very important window into life at public schools, however. For better or for worse, everything I ever learned about public education came from John Hughes movies.
Hughes died on Thursday, leaving a legacy of pop culture which extends far beyond teaching private school kids like me that sometimes you were graded in gym for very important dances and the true meaning of the Laffer Curve and voodoo economics.
Generally, the death of a celebrity doesn’t faze me much. I can’t grieve for someone I didn’t know. The news of Hughes’ death, however, did make me look back on how his work really impacted people of my generation.
Beneath the many, many quotes that my contemporaries and I can throw out in almost any conversation, I think we developed a better understanding of one another because of movies like “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club.”
Sure, the awkward girl might not always get the cute guy, and the rich girl might not give the stoner her diamond earring, but Hughes gave us a chance to see that everyone does have something to offer, even those interested in the custodial arts or with names that sound like major appliances.
I don’t know how that affected life in public high schools, but I know it made me even more excited about going away to college than I could imagine. I wanted to have those kinds of relationships, an impossible standard to meet. I did get to meet a pretty funny Japanese exchange student, but he never drove a car into a lake as far as I know.
But don’t think I have nothing but good memories about Hughes’ movies. He also caused me some serious harm from his depiction of a high school wrestler in “The Breakfast Club.”
I have had to hear countless comments about “tights” and “the required uniform.” Only recently have I discovered the ability to laugh at the joke. And what was Hughes thinking having a wrestler eat a huge lunch in the middle of the season? You can only suspend disbelief for so long.
I’m kidding, of course. Kind of.
That’s the power Hughes’ movies had, though. You could find yourself somehow in a single character and the whole group of them at the same time. We all wanted our birthdays to be epic, everyone wanted to skip school nine times, the thought of creating the girl of our dreams with a computer sounded so promising.
That last one probably doesn’t apply to everyone, but continues to demonstrate just how many movies Hughes made. I shook my head in disbelief when I read the list online after he died. Hit after hit after hit.
Earlier this summer, the world stopped to remember the King of Pop after he died. Well, I’m stopping now to remember the King of Pop Culture. Because I can remember lots of things.