Those of us in the Gen X cohort—and probably the Millennial cohort too—grew up with John Hughes movies.
The thing people younger than that potentially don’t understand is that John Hughes didn’t invent class and social struggle in the American public high school. He reflected it.
One of the reasons movies like Some Kind of Wonderful, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and, of course, The Breakfast Club resonated so much with us is because they were true.
Now, they were exaggerated, to a certain degree. Or maybe they weren’t.
No matter how old I am, when I watch Bender’s monologue—“stupid, worthless, no-good…”—and his honest, authentic rage about what happens at his house, most of my cohort is like, “Yeah. I believe that.”
Even if those specific things weren’t said or done to us personally, the sensation of it—the abuse, the neglect, all of it—felt real. And we probably knew someone for whom it was true. I laugh at “Wanna know what I got for Christmas this year? It was a better fuckin’ year at the old Bender family. I got a carton of cigarettes.” This was a real thing for one of my friends.
That’s why we loved those movies. When we saw one of the characters dealing with people of a different alleged social class putting them down in some way, people of my generation were like, “Yeah. That’s how it goes.”
I don’t want to speak for our entire cohort, but I think that’s why a lot of us still love those movies now. (Problematic now? Yes. But that’s a different conversation.)
Things Have Changed
In the intervening years, things have changed quite a bit.
I hope things have changed a lot.
I started seeing it when I became an author and began doing school visits, specifically as a young adult author. I was visiting a lot of high schools, and I could already see differences.
I remember going to a high school football game about fifteen years ago, and the quarterback was also the valedictorian.
Where I come from—I don’t know whether this was true for you, but it was true at my school, in my area, in my era—that was unheard of.
You could be the quarterback or be on a team. You could be smart and get good grades. Or you could be into Dungeons & Dragons, theater, chess, band, or whatever your nerdy thing was. But you cannot be both.
I imagine every school had its own social stratifications. A lot of this depends on what part of the country you were in and what your immediate local community was like.
But a quarterback who was also the valedictorian?
Not where I came from. This is a good change.
We Still Wear the Uniforms
Look, if you’re thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years old and you’re still wearing Vans? Bro. You’re probably not skating tonight.
(Okay, some of you may be.)
But the majority of us who still wear Vans probably aren’t hitting a half-pipe anytime soon. Or, if we are, it’s because we’re hitting it with our face and breaking a hip.
So why the hell do we still wear Vans?
Well, first of all, because they’re badass…
But they’re badass because Vans has spent decades cultivating a very specific image and a very specific brand that speaks to us. We want to be associated with that.
One of my prized possessions is a pair of black Vans with the Social Distortion Skelly logo on the side.
I fucking love those shoes, man.
And I want people who see me wearing them to go, “Oh!” and make judgments about me. For good or for ill.
That is the point.
The People Who Never Scared Me
I would genuinely love to hear feedback about this, because I’m sure it’s different for everybody:
I don’t remember ever being accosted by somebody wearing a Nine Inch Nails shirt. Or a Bauhaus shirt. Or fucking Vans, for that matter.
You know what I’m saying?
I don’t remember ever being accosted, assaulted, or made to feel less than by somebody with crazy-colored hair.
Never.
Why? Well, that’s a topic for another time.
I’m just saying that has been my life experience.
Those are also the kids—and the adults—I write about a lot.
I don’t know what the different social levels, categories, or whatever you want to call them are these days in your local American high school. I think they’re different from when I was there.
My kid, for example, is turning into a complete jock. He’s a football player, which shocks the hell out of me.
He also plays D&D.
That was not going to happen in the ’80s and ’90s. Not going to happen.
And that’s cool. I’m so glad to see it.
53rd & 3rd
This book I have coming soon is called 53rd & 3rd, based on the Ramones song.
(It is not about New York. It is not about prostitution. There are just a lot of Ramones references in the story, for reasons you’ll see when you read it.)
53rd & 3rd is a breakdown of “those kids” I grew up with—the kids who, I think, still exist in the American landscape.
It’s about how they respond when someone who allegedly doesn’t belong starts to infiltrate their group.
Like many of my novels, it takes place over the course of just one night, because, in my experience, that’s when the big things happen.
It’s that one phone call, right? That one email. That one text that upends your whole world.
So the book takes place over one night, on one corner, with one group of kids who are all suffering from a collective trauma they experienced in another book I wrote called Mercy Rule.
53rd a companion to Mercy Rule, but not really a sequel.
It’s about these outsider kids—or whatever you want to call them, the kids I was happy to be associated with as a teenager—and what happens when their group gets invaded.
Or so they think. They think it’s an invasion.
It’s a story about being one of Those Kids and if we’re all as open-armed as we think or thought ourselves to be. I know I struggle with that, still. But the kids in this novel still get it right by the time the sun comes up on their little corner of the city.
And that’s the stuff I love to write about. Going through hell together, and coming out the other side together.
Because Those Kids with the crazy color in their hair and their Docs and their leather jackets are why I’m here today.
Remember who you were. Those Kids have a lot to teach us.
How about you? What’s your story of Those Kids?
~ Tom
