Army of Mom

So this is how liberty dies ... with thunderous applause.

1.27.2005

My Jake Ryan

A friend passed along this little column about how movies make women nuts (ok, add to our nuttiness) by making us think there are perfect men out there like Jake Ryan from John Hughes' Sixteen Candles.

I actually have this video. And, yes, it is on VHS.

I had my Jake Ryan. He wasn't rich, but he was handsome and popular and was the quarterback of our high school football team. We exchanged notes between classes, he threatened to beat up boys who bothered me and we each had an undying crush on each other. Only ... neither one of us knew about the other's until he was getting ready to graduate from high school. He was a junior when I was a freshman and I thought he was da bomb. Every girl thought he was all that. He was handsome, muscular, a youth leader at the church and athletic. And, the worst part, he was really nice. He had a bitchy cheerleader girlfriend who despised our friendship.

At one vulnerable point right before he was graduating, he admitted to me that he always had a crush on me. I could have died. I had a boyfriend at the time, who I thought I loved, *I think he had the micropenis diagnsosis, in retrospect, but I didn't know that at the time* and I wouldn't ditch him for my hero.

I don't know what might have happened had things been different. This poor guy went on to be a youth minister or something at the church while going through college and he wound up getting ran out of church for boinking the girls in the youth group. Worst part of it was that he was boinking the ugly ones. I never got that.

Last I heard, my version of Jake Ryan was a firefighter somewhere in the Metroplex and he was married with some kids. I ran into him a few years ago at the hair salon and he still gave me a schoolboy smile and flirted. He even looked me up on classmates.com and we exchanged a few emails talking about our spouses and children. We didn't stay in touch. What was the use?

Still, it is nice to know that Jake Ryan was there. He was sort of real for me.

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