BettyRants: Moliere, John Hughes, My Family, and Me.

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Moliere, John Hughes, My Family, and Me.

Picture, if you will, a house (my parents') filled with family deliriously happy to be back together after many months apart. Baby Sis feeds Baby Boy in the kitchen, Sweetheart, Dad, and Baby Sis's Hubs in the living room, debate the merits of modern cinema. I lie prostrate on the living room floor, one of Baby Sis's best friends, Rose, perched precariously atop my posterior, kneading out the knots of my day.

The boys' conversation suddenly swings to Sylvester Stallone movies of old: Rocky, First Blood, Rambo...you get the idea, when Sweetheart pops out with, "That comedy that he did. You know, the one where he played the gangster?"
Sis's Hubs: "Oscar?"
Sweetheart: "Yeah! That one! I loved that movie!"
Hubs: "That was the biggest piece of crap I ever saw!"
Dad: "I have no idea what movie you two are talking about."
Sweetheart: "No, it was awesome! Don't you see? It was meant to be that way! They were making fun of everything. It was like a Moliere piece : a farce and a total send-up of mob society."
Hubs: "Whatever. I still think it sucked."

Suddenly, my head lifts from the carpet long enough to say, "Moe-lay really pumps my nads!"

Uproarious laughter and guffawing pours from Baby Sis in the kitchen, "'Moliere.'...'I love his work.'"

Sweetheart, Dad, Hubs, Rose, Baby Sis, and I all dissolve into fits of hysteria. Baby Boy even caught himself a case of the giggles!

I shout out, "Dude, I totally love you! I love that you heard that and nailed it without even thinking!"

Dad chimes in, "She is totally your mother's daughter. Mom can hear any conversation from any room in the house." (I'm not sure he got the reference.)

Me: "I totally raised you right! I'm so proud of you at this moment! I love you, man!"

Seven years separate Baby Sis and me. When The Breakfast Club was released, I was its target audience. She was a little kid. Then it came out on VHS! Remember those? (Humor me. Pretend that you do.) We watched it over and over again at my house, along with Sixteen Candles, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the rest of the John Hughes collection. My friends and I were obsessed. I wanted to be Molly Ringwald, or, "Molly Wallringer," as Mom so often called her. I wanted to eat, "Raw fish, rice, and seaweed," out of a Bento box with chopsticks for lunch at school. After I came home from six weeks at North Carolina School of the Arts, I spent the rest of the summer before my senior year in high school eating with chopsticks! I tried to apply lipstick with my cleavage, to no avail. I was flat as a board.

"I can't believe my grandmother felt me up!" Baby Sis and I used to laugh together about our grandmother who constantly bemoaned my lack of physical endowment.

"So that's how it is in their family..." The words of Principal Rooney still echo throughout the halls of our house whenever anyone does anything ridiculous, which is more often than not.

I got to thinking today that John Hughes penned the dialogue that has accompanied the better part of our lives. Then, as I started writing this blog post, I realized that it wasn't just John Hughes movies that stitched our social and cultural foundation. So many other phenomenal films have woven themselves seamlessly into the fabric of our everyday lives over the years that we hardly realize it anymore. The lines slip out as naturally as we utter our names.

Any mention of lotion or a basket will automatically prompt one of two responses: "It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it's told or else it gets the hose again," or "Put the F*cking lotion in the basket," from The Silence of the Lambs.

If cannoli is on the menu or someone breathes word of a firearm, "Leave the gun. Take the cannoli," from The Godfather.

And, of course, if rules should ever come up, "The first rule of Fight Club is 'Don't talk about Fight Club.' The second rule of Fight Club is 'Don't talk about Fight Club.'"

These quotes, homages really, are out of our mouths before we can stop them. This, I might add, is true of most of my friends. I have to say, I love that about us! I love that we have embraced so much of what Hollywood has to offer that we have integrated it into our everyday vernacular. I will admit, though, it is a challenge some days to keep those lines inside my head and out of my mouth at school when fed, by a middle schooler, the perfect lead in to, "Put the f*cking lotion in the basket!"

So that's how it is in our family. And I wouldn't have it any other way!