Brain Splatter

I remember John Bender. At the beginning of The Breakfast Club as the kids were arriving up walked Bender past them all. He was wearing layers of clothing that he may have picked up off the floor of his room or maybe had slept in the night before.His boots stomped across the parking lot. No one drove Bender to school.

Then in the library he was an antagonist. He wasn't going to sit and write an essay. Had Bender ever written an essay in his life? Probably not.

He confronted the authority. Did he win? No. And when he was told he would be a loser for the rest of his life you could see on his face that he knew it was true. Shit, John Bender had been told by his parents that he would be a loser since the day he was born. The worst part was that this scum bag Vice Principal thought so little of him that he would say it right to his face.

Back in the room the other students started to come around to him. To his honesty. To the fact that he knew that high school was bullshit. That authority was bullshit. That there is only this one moment here in this library.

At the end of the movie The Princess kisses him and gives him an earring. We can assume that at some point later they got together but we know that at least for the one day Bender wasn't a loser in the eyes of four other people. He wasn't a loser in his own eyes. He showed with a fist raised in the air that yeah, today, for once, John Bender was a winner.

So I remember John Bender today. I remember because John Hughes died.

The man who made many movies that I laughed at. Movies that I quoted. Movies that I watched on HBO, TNT, USA, and VHS.

I know how many times I have seen The Breakfast Club, or Weird Science, or Sixteen Candles. I can't count how many times I have seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I do know that if I ever go to Chicago and see the sites I will be thinking, "this is one of the places where Ferris, Cameron, and Sloane went." And I will smile because in a way, it was like I had been there before.

So I want to say thank you to John Hughes. Thank you for making some great movies. Thank you for giving me entertainment. Thank you for the cultural signpost of my youth. Thank you for John Bender.