I really don’t have any musical talent. Thirteen years of Catholic education only provided me with the knowledge of how to sing hymns. Or how to pretend to sing hymns.

I did try playing the guitar in junior high, but sports eventually won out over that pursuit. I still love music and hope to one day write a song that I have pent up inside of me. I even know the title.

“John Hughes Ruined My Life.”

You see, I watched all of his movies as a teenager, albeit one who wore a coat and tie every day to an all-male high school. I was also painfully shy around girls.

So everything I knew about the social mores of teenage life came from movie writers like John Hughes. I thought everyone hung in specific cliques, and, if you waited long enough, the right girl would just magically end up by your side. Or she be charmed when you stalked her.

Imagine my surprise when I got to college and realized that things worked a little differently in the real world. Thankfully, I figured it out before I resorted to stalking.

I still wanted to write a song about it because I love 80s movies, but also know the pitfalls surrounding them. That’s why I just absolutely devoured the book “You Couldn’t Ignore Me If You Tried” by Susannah Gora last month.

Kids today can find movies like “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “The Breakfast Club” all over cable, but I don’t think they can truly comprehend what they mean to people in their late 30s and early 40s.

I really can’t think of any comparable films or programs which kids today will hold in the same regard in a few decades. The Judd Apatow movies made so many people laugh, but that humor is fleeting and didn’t really affect any other areas of life, with the exception of the bank accounts of those involved.

While I love “Jersey Shore” and other trash reality television, that genre will never stand the test of time even though it holds cultural sway over so many people right now.

That’s why someone needed to write the book that Gora did. The movies that came from Hughes and Cameron Crowe and others writers and directors of the time affected fashion, music and even the way teens looked at each other.

The book gives so much insight over how all this happened, thanks to interviews with many of the stars and behind-the-scenes people. The process of how this cultural shift took place is as engrossing as the movies themselves.

I remember watching “St. Elmo’s Fire” a year before I left for college and hoping I would have a group of friends like that (minus the cocaine addiction) when I finished school. Sometimes I think I only really care because I’m on the other side of 40, but I realize that the movies mean just as much to others.

The fact that John Hughes ruined all of our lives helps me get through it all a lot easier. Because we’d be much worse off if he hadn’t done that for us.