[I Know This Much is] True

I’m super excited to have been invited to join a blog group alongside three talented bloggers.  Each week, one of us chooses a topic and we all post a blog entry on that topic, usually on Thursdays.   

Here are the links to the other fabulous blogs:

Merryland Girl

Froggie

Moma Rock

This week’s topic came from me, and I asked the ladies:  Is it ever better to not know the truth?  If so, give an example.  Here’s my take:

                  I chose the topic because something was nagging at me.  Something important.  Something . . . something stirred up by a weekend watching Sixteen Candles on an ABC Family John Hughes marathon.  As the lights faded on the birthday cake scene, I struggled with a heavy issue:  What ever happened to Jake Ryan?  And, more importantly, did I really, truly want to know?

                  Generally speaking, I am not a movie person.  I much prefer a good book to a solid film.  I blame it on my as-of-yet-undiagnosed-adult-onset-ADD (I so have no patience to sit still in a room for two hours), but I don’t know the real reason why movies just don’t hold my attention.  I don’t ever care which film wins the Academy Award, because, usually, I haven’t seen a single one.  Ask me to list my Top Ten favorite films and I struggle, because I feel like I haven’t seen ten really good flicks. 

                  But one film always makes the cut.  Always.  And I’ve not only seen it from start to finish, I’ve seen it many, many times.  Hell, I can even recite from it. 

                  Oh, John Hughes, you managed what so many have tried, but at which so few have succeeded:  you wove a story worth two hours of my time.  (Ok, 93 minutes, plus previews.)

                  Sixteen Candles was released on May 4, 1984.  I didn’t expect to love the movie even though, at the time of its release, I was, actually, sixteen years old.  Maybe that coincidence alone should have been enough to garner my affection, and perhaps it was.  But there was more.  Much more.  Get this:  my older sister got engaged three days before my Sweet Sixteen. 

                 

                  Three days.  Three.  Freakin’.  Days. 

                  And wait, there’s even more!  My Grandparents called from California on my actual birthday, but when I got on the phone to say hello, my Grandmother completely forgot what day it was.  No birthday wishes were proffered and, like Samantha, I chose not to remind my Grandma of her oversight.  She called back hours later, when I wasn’t home.  Apparently she felt really awful – as did I.

                  So, yeah, about the movie?  I totally related.

                  Of course, I didn’t identify with the whole picture John Hughes painted.  I didn’t live on the tony North Shore in a three-story brick Colonial with a briefcase-carrying father and an annoying little brother.  I lived in the city, in an aluminum-sided wooden frame house with one bathroom and a Dad who carried a gun and handcuffs to his job as a police officer.  My sister, though older and getting married, was not a princess, and her fiancé was not an oily bohunk.  I rode a bus to school, but it was a city bus packed with city people and a herd of uniformed teenaged girls headed to my tiny all-girls’ Catholic high school filled with crucifixes and Religion classes – and not to fancy New Trier, with its atriums and designer clothes and rowing teams.  And my high school boyfriend, though cute in his own high school-boyfriend kind of way, looked nothing like the heart-stopping, sigh-inducing Jake Ryan.

                  Ah, Jake.  The dreamy heart of my dilemma. 

                  I loved Jake.  We all loved Jake – even the guys, even if they won’t admit it.  I loved Jake enough to name my kitten Jake Ryan.  (In a related note:  The kitten has not lived up to his name.  He refuses to wear a sweater vest, he smells like his litter box and not like pine and soap as I imagined the real Jake Ryan, and he has lost all five of the plaid collars I purchased for him.)  What wasn’t to love about Jake Ryan?  He was beautiful, inside and out.  He had money, but he didn’t flaunt it.  He judged girls not only by their superficial outer layer, but also by their glowing inner beauty.  He forgave geekiness.  He sought only true love.  He made a sweater vest look hot.

                  Sigh.

                  I realize, of course, Jake Ryan is fictional, the creative creation of my generation’s scribe.  I know the beautiful man in the plaid shirt and red sports car is actually Michael Schoeffling, a former model, an actor, a man.  Though, really, I’m not sure I can separate the two.  And that has led to a bit of a quandary. 

                  After Sixteen Candles, Michael Schoeffling’s shooting sparkling star quickly faded.  He won roles in a few less-than-successful movies, but after that, his career stalled.  So he disappeared.  Literally, he vanished.  Poof!  Gone.  For decades, we’ve wondered where and why.  But no one asks what happened to Michael Shoeffling.  No, instead we query:  Where the hell is Jake Ryan?

                  Many rumors have surfaced, the most popular being that “Jake” moved to Pennsylvania, where he crafts what is undoubtedly gorgeous hand-made furniture.  But the rumor has never been confirmed, and no photos of Jake have ever surfaced; strange, given the tenacity and reach of today’s paparazzi. 

                  For a long time, I wanted to know what happened to Michael Schoeffling a/k/a Jake Ryan.  I wanted to know where he lived, how he spent his time, and, most importantly, what he looked like.  I followed the blog The Jake Ryan Project and would occasionally do a quick Google search to see if anyone had found the elusive former star.  I wanted – no, I needed – to know the truth.

                  But, now, I’m not so sure.  And that’s because, recently, Jake-Ryan-Michael-Schoeffling turned fifty-three.  Fifty.  Three.  5-3.  Fifty-three is sixteen candles times three – plus five.  My Mom wasn’t even fifty-three when the movie was released.  Fifty-three is a big jump for someone who, at last check, played an eighteen-year-old high school senior. 

                  And so I’m left to wonder, do I want to see a fifty-three-year-old Jake Ryan?  Could I handle that truth?

                  As the years have rolled by, we’ve watched comebacks of the movie’s other two young stars, Molly Ringwald (who turns forty-six next month) and Anthony Michael Hall (who follows suit in April).  We’ve seen them try their hands at comedy and singing, at acting and writing.  We’ve watched them grow; from the skinny, twerpy dorky adolescent into the huge, actually kind-of-cool grown man, and from the thin, curly-haired red head into a middle-aged mom and nightclub singer.  But in doing so, we had to accept certain truths and face certain facts.  We had to see Samantha with wrinkles and hips.  We had to accept that The Geek was losing his hair and would no longer fit under anyone’s glass coffee table.  Along with those revelations came perhaps the most difficult truth:  we, too, are much older.  We are no longer throwing parties in our parents’ houses when they leave town.  Now, it is our house.  Our kids.  Their parties.

                  Ouch.

                  I don’t think I could face those kinds of truths as to Jake Ryan.  There is something compelling, something simply magical, about Jake being eternally eighteen.  Unless he managed to look exactly has he did in 1984, I don’t think I could handle the truth.  What if he’s got a beer belly?  What if he’s bald?  What if he’s a jerk?  By not knowing the truth, the reality, I’m able to hold on to the last truth I have, one that dates back thirty years, untainted by the ravages of time.  And in my truth, Jake Ryan is young and handsome.  And perfect.

                  Not by design (I swear), my current home is quite close to Samantha’s movie home.  Sometimes when the mood strikes, I take a walk past the house.  I play If You Were Here on my iPod, and in my mind’s eye, I can see Jake Ryan standing on the stoop, waiting for Samantha.  It’s a beautiful image, one that rewinds me back three decades to a time that seems much easier now, a time when I didn’t think about wrinkles or weight gain, about hair loss or hectic schedules.  I fear that, if I see what Jake Ryan looks like now, the reality will erase the illusion, leaving me with only what I am – a middle-aged wife and mother standing on the sidewalk in her Chicago suburb – while taking away that which I once was:  a young, dreamy teenager with an entire lifetime ahead of her.