The Breakfast Club

That's right. The movie. 

My husband and I were talking recently (well, a couple of months ago -- I'm just getting around to writing this now) about movie nostalgia, both the nostalgia for movies from a bygone time, and movies that are, themselves, nostalgic for a bygone era (like American Graffiti, for instance, a 1970s movie about the 1950s).

Anyway, naturally, The Breakfast Club came up. 

Because that's THE film for every 80s teen, right?

Before I go on, let's stipulate that it's not a cinematic masterpiece. It's not beautiful. And it's got no groundbreaking cinematography. The actors are good young actors, but no Oscars were handed out here. 

Still, it spoke to us. The "types" depicted by Claire, Brian, Allison, Andrew and John -- the five kids in detention -- were meant to be "us."  We were meant to pick one and identify with him/her. And then, in the end, we were supposed to come together and know that we are all the same because we all have problems and being a teenager is hard. (And we DO, and it IS.)

Laaaa lalalalaaaa lalalalaaaa lala la lala lala lalalaa

When I first saw the movie, I was in a quandary. I wanted to identify with Claire. But I wasn't prom queen material, really.  (At least, I didn't think that I was....)  Truthfully, I should have identified with Brian, but I didn't want to acknowledge the ugly hubris that comes with being a smart kid who knows it. And, ironically, my incredible insecurity (also natural to a lot of smart kids, and teens in general) made acknowledging that insecurity by identifying with Brian impossible. I obviously wasn't a jock or stoner, so Andrew and John Bender were out. So I was left settling for Allison. The Freak. But that was wholly unsatisfying because...well, that scene where she makes it snow on her drawing with her dandruff is gross.  And that wasn't me.  I'd never do that.  I wasn't a freak. I was a Princess Geek. 

So maybe John Hughs was right and we are all a little bit of each character.

 

I mean, frankly, lately, I've been feeling a little bit like Mr. Vernon, the principal, trapped in his often unsatisfying, stultifying, grown-up existence. Even sometimes I feel like Carl, the Janitor, who dreamt of being John Lennon, but ended up the school janitor.

 

The movie isn't about several different "types," after all.  It's about one type, one universal human theme:  the desire to break out of whatever existence you've got and feel free, and the related understanding that no matter what existence we may have we all, sometimes, feel a little trapped by it, a little too defined by it.

The movie is, as it turns out, about potential. The five kids are full of it. The two main adult characters (and even the parents), demonstrate what happens to that potential when it hits the air outside of high school. So hope, that's what resonated with us when we watched it almost 30 years ago. Hope that we, the teenagers, would do better than the adults around us did. And, as adults, some of us still are able to dream those dreams, and hope those hopes...even if we've wound up being a little bit like Carl or Mr. Vernon. 

 

Richard Vernon:  What did you wanna be when you were young?

Carl:  When I was a kid, I wanted to be John Lennon.

Richard Vernon:  Carl, don't be a goof. I'm making a serious point here.

Change

The Boy has been going to a new school for about a month, now.

Over the past several months we had considered moving The Boy to a different preschool.  We had increasingly felt that he was not being challenged, that he was bored.

I know. He's three.

But a bored three year old is a disruptive, potentially destructive, force.  It's serious business.

Plus, we want him to develop as much as he can develop in a way appropriate to his age.  And if he's bored, that's not happening.

We would discuss moving schools here and there in off-hand sorts of ways, and occasionally more seriously, but would always decide against it, mainly because of friendships -- The Boy's and ours. The Boy had gone to his old school since he was about 10 weeks old. It took me three days to even be able it leave him there. Then, when I did, I sat in our living room crying, sobbing, "I want my baby!"  It was incredibly difficult. 

But in time, it became okay. We developed trust of the teachers. And they loved our boy. 

And The Boy loved his friends he made at school. His buddy, The Dude, who I mentioned early on in this blog, remains one of his best friends.  Around age 2, he developed a strong attachment to a petite, loquacious, wide-eyed, intelligent girl.  Another girl with an affinity for Lightning McQueen, just like him, became a friend....  A boy with tremendous brown eyes and a sweet smile....  A girl with miles of gorgeous dark curls, who frequently went "lion hunting" with The Boy....  And others that we, his parents, didn't get to know as well, but The Boy did.

So whenever the idea of moving schools came up, it was soon packed away again because we didn't want to take The Boy away from these friends. The idea of it, in fact, made me extremely sad.

And, too, change is difficult.  And you get used to what you know.  You're not sure if the change will be better or worse.  And, well, there's a lot of bother to it.  The lazy part of you doesn't want to change if everything else is pretty much chugging along more or less harmoniously.

But, without going into detail, a series of concerning events at his old school, in late May and early June, caused us to, once again, consider changing schools.

In fact, we did withdraw him from his old school in mid-June.

It was an incredibly emotional thing for me. I cried. I fretted. 

All his little friends!  Some of them, we'll keep friends with -- the ones whose parents have become our own friends, like The Dude and the other kids mentioned. But the rest of the class, with whose parents we've not become close, they are in all likelihood lost to memories. It's the worst thing about the move.  But, as The Dude's mom said to me, kids are resilient.  He'll make new friends. 

And so, here we are, a month later and The Boy has thrived in his new environment.  He's actually, honestly very happy. One day this past week he said, "I'm excited to go to school, Mommy!"  That is something I have, frankly, never heard him say before.  I was elated!

It makes me wonder, now, why I was so upset and sad about the move.  We humans get comfortable in situations.  We develop loyalties that are difficult to break. Those are good traits that lead to stable society.  But they also make necessary change very hard.

Our change has yielded great results for our little guy.  The Boy seems engaged and more focused at his new school. (This is in the context of what may be expected of a three year old, of course. He's not suddenly doing calculus eight hours a day.)

Too, I honestly feel like he's even a little better behaved at home, now (the tantrum about Legos this weekend notwithstanding).

And he has made new friends. And many our old friends -- The Dude, and the rest -- are all still there too.

This has been, to take Martha Stewart out of context, a very good thing.