9: Pretty in Pink

1986, Winston-Salem North Carolina

With my aunt

I was spending the weekend with my grandparents-it was after dinner and we were going to visit relatives in nursing homes. I have been doing this my whole life.  I know what to talk about-my favorite subjects at school and lessons from church.  Sports I don't play, but books I love to read.  Sometimes I talk about stickers that are traded back and forth or the stationary that we use to pass notes while no one is looking, hoping no boys will intercept them.  My great-grandmother likes the stickers and the stationary but avoids the boy talk, if my mom is there she starts glaring at me big time.  It's just me tonight.  I might talk about a chapter from a Judy Blume book. That'll get them.

I was in the backseat of the Cherokee Jeep waiting to go when I saw my 19 year old aunt head toward her own car-a Volkswagen.  She stopped before she opened the front door.  She turned around, and came back to the jeep in slow motion.

Panic set in.  Was I wearing a pair of her earrings?  Was she going to smell me to make sure I hadn't gotten into the Love's Baby Soft?  Was I humming Adam Ant incorrectly again?  Goody goody goody whatever...

She poked her head in the back and said, "So-do you want to go visit the elderly or do you want to go to the mall and movies with me?"

Really?  Did she just ask me what I thought she did?  Is there a candid camera somewhere?  Is this like when Ray-Ray, the boy around the corner, calls me, asks me out, screams "Psych!" and hangs up the phone?  I swear this time if she is teasing I will tattle.

"Yes!  Yes!  Please! I want to go with you!"  You have no idea how privileged I was to get to go out to the mall at age 11 in the 5th grade with my aunt, a Freshman in college.

"OK-I'll tell Dad I'm taking you-but here are my rules."

 Rules?  Crap, she is giving me rules. Gulp-no red hair flip was going to work on her.

"OK"

"1) You do what I say."

That one was easy enough, I've always done what she said. "OK"

"2) You don't tell Grandmother or Grandaddy anything I say or do. What I buy or what we go see." 

"OK"  I think she was still mad about the Prince concert-surely she understood gossip about concerts with performers in underwear trickled down to 5th grade.  I didn't know they didn't know.


"3) If we run into someone I know, I will introduce you as my niece and you say Hi and that is that.   Don't try to start a conversation."

"OK"  None of this seemed unreasonable for a night out with a teenager.

We bought clothes and I told her what I thought looked good and what didn't and I can't remember if she took my opinion seriously or not. We bought cookies and cokes we probably weren't supposed to have, and then we headed to the theater.

"Pretty in Pink?"

"Perfect!"

And so it began with the theme song by the Psychedelic Furs as Andie gets ready for another painful day of high school.

The first time you watch a movie, the characters aren't pop culture icons yet. Andie is just a girl with RED hair and Duckie is this annoying guy she can't rid of and Blane is the boy with the BMW. Annie Potts was just Iona.  NOW these people represent growing up, first love, disappointment, finding out who you truly are, etc. and so on, but then, then they were teenagers going on dates and having parties.

I wanted to go to prom.  I wanted to make a dress. My grandmother and I did make a dress together about four years later. It was awesome.

I remember the ending-Molly's character Andie made her own prom dress out of Iona's old one and the one her father bought for her and she was going to go alone.  She wasn't going to let Blane get to her. 

Duckie showed up to be her date-how awesome that he does that for her!

And then....and then she ran after Blane. Sweetie, no. There is something called too little too late.   When a guy tells you he asked someone else, you let it go and you don't look back. It didn't sit well with me at age eleven-even if Duckie got the original Buffy Vampire Slayer at the end of the movie.

I found out later that the Blane ending was done after test audiences said they wanted the rich/poor ending. I still disagree. Not over money-economics don't always play a factor in love- but lying, throwing guys against lockers, and listening to the wrong people over and over again do.

She went to the prom as an independent woman,and Duckie came through. Remember that ladies-I need to check the DVDs for the alternate ending and make sure that is the one Frances watches.

My aunt and I walked out of there disagreeing on Molly's prom dress, but agreeing she shouldn't have run after the rich guy.  She and I haven't seen a movie together since-maybe this is the year we go, and take my cousin, her sixteen year old daughter, with us.

The rules are there are no rules!