A couple weekends ago, I introduced P to the wonderful world of 80′s teen movies. She’s two, clearly ready for these life lessons. Her first assignment? Pretty in Pink of course. You know, the movie that made red hair cool in American high schools? I can assure you it wasn’t cool up to that point. Yes, Ralph DeLuca, I’m still bitter about the ‘pumpkin head’ comments.

I think I saw that movie for the first time the summer before my freshman year of high school. And anticipated that my experience would mirror Molly Ringwald’s once I lost twenty pounds and found a hair stylist to fix my unruly curls. Oh, and found a cool pink car.

Sadly, I’m still trying to lose the twenty pounds (and a few extra that I picked up along the last two decades – WTF? TWO DECADES?) and my stylist has improved, but the frizz is still the frizz and likely always will be. My car is neither cool nor pink and I’m selling plasma to fill the gas tank. Oh I kid, plasma selling is my Plan B, for now I’m just couponing. Yeah, cause that’s believable.

For those of you living under a rock, I’ll briefly recap the joy that is Pretty in Pink. Awesome soundtrack. Hands down one.of.the.best. Molly Ringwald’s character, Andie, comes from the wrong side of the tracks, she’s smart and talented and knows who she is (you know, just like you were your Senior Year of high school). Her best friend, loyal, funny and true, Duckie Dale, is played by the wonderful Jon Cryer (you can see the aged version in Two and a Half Men on CBS). And her richie love crush with questionable character, Blane, is played by Andrew McCarthy. Andrew McCarthy is now playing some ho-hum billionaire on NBC’s Lipstick Jungle – with a name like that, they don’t really give the show a chance, do they?

Andie likes Blane, Blane likes Andie but they come from different worlds – how can they make it work? Duckie worships Andie, but Andie only wants to be friends. The ups the downs, the prom dress shopping.

I don’t want to spoil it for the 0.004% of the population that haven’t seen this yet. But there is one thing we must discuss, so you’ve been spoiler-warned.

When this movie originally released, the ending had Andie and Duckie living happily ever after. I guess Andie realized she loved him all along? Who knows, only that select audience ever saw this version and they blackballed that puppy. The studio caved and re-shot the ending. Andie and Blaine live happily ever after, even with Andrew McCarthy’s f’d up hair.

Here is the zen moment of this post (wake up).

At 15, this is the ending we all dreamed about. My dream? Riding off into the sunset with M, the major appliance (name withheld to protect my dignity). The wrong choice, the wrong reason, the wrong hair cut M. And we pine for M. Vow we’ll never love another. Our teen angst turns to twenty-something bitterness and we contemplate the convent and lesbianism. Neither suit us, but we have years where we dress accordingly.

Then we wake up years later and we’re happily married to our Duckie. And we realize we don’t tell Duckie often enough how lucky we are.

I love you D.

And don’t give me grief about the photo – it was a perfect fit for the duck metaphor simile oxymoron parable metonymy synedoche homonym bit.