Musings

Jake Ryan Syndrome

Yesterday I began reading 32 Candles by Ernessa T. Carter. I hadn't heard anything about the book until Karen Siplin (author of Whiskey Road, Such a Girl and His Insignificant Other)recommended it to me a few days ago. Already from the first chapter I was hooked. Davidia "Davie" Jones is a fascinating main character and what she goes through at the beginning of the book is more than what most of us would be able to handle or even live through. But there was something else that struck a chord in me with Davie and that is our mutual love of John Hughes films, specifically Sixteen Candles starring Molly Ringwald and Michael Schoeffling.

I was 14 when Sixteen Candles was released and, after seeing it reviewed by Siskel and Ebert on "At the Movies"...well, I had to see it. Little did I know that two things would eventually happen to me: 1) when I turned 16 my parents would forget my birthday and 2) I began comparing all the boys I met to Jake Ryan. Now having your life imitate art isn't really that unusual. I am used to everyone forgetting my birthday (though I don't like it very much since I am one of those people who usually remembers other people's birthdays) since it's at the tail-end of the Christmas/New Year's holidays and no one has time/money/whatever to remember the blessed day of 3 January, let alone buy me a nice present and wish me a happy birthday. But my parents made such a big deal about how important things like your 16th birthday and going to the prom were to the rest of your life that I figured they would at least take me out to dinner on my birthday. But no one remembered. And when they did, I was given a card a few days later and muttered apologies but no dinner out, nothing that proclaimed the onset of my 16th year as anything monumental.

Actually, 16 was a year that sucked royally. And I blame it partly on Jake Ryan.
For those of you who were living in a cave or weren't even born yet in 1984, Jake Ryan was the boy who Samantha Baker (Molly Ringwald's character) loved from afar. At first she barely registers on his social radar but then something happens--he starts falling for her too.

Now at 14 I was only just beginning to realize that guys were actually attractive. So seeing Michael Schoeffling as Jake Ryan--good-looking, rich, popular and nice (now how often does that happen in reality that you get all four in one package?)--well, I was in love. Or as in love as you can be at fourteen. And suddenly I had a barometer I could judge any potential boyfriend by. Did he pass the Jake Ryan test. He didn't have to be all four. Three out of four was totally acceptable. Hell, even two out of four was okay. But at fourteen, my experience with boys was limited to three boys: Martin, Mario and Jake (no, not Jake Ryan but the name was a bonus). None of them really passed the Jake Ryan test. And none of them had cars since two of them were too young to drive and one could drive but couldn't afford a car or gas but did have a skateboard. I would just have to wait.

By the time I turned 16, I'd dated a few more boys but still hadn't found my Jake Ryan. I went out with one boy who seemed to like sleeping with every girl I knew. Another was still enamoured with his ex-girlfriend. I found one who was almost Jake but in the end he didn't cut the mustard either. So while I suffered through going to a high school I hated and constantly wishing I could be somewhere else, I was always on the lookout for the person who would wait outside my house and whisk me away and give me my Sixteen Candles moment, even as I was pretending I was too cool to care about things like that.

Sixteen came and went and I didn't get my Jake Ryan but I continued meeting a few more Mr. Maybes and Mr. Definitely Nots. Occasionally, one of my friends would tell me about her Jake Ryan barometer, though often the name was different. All of us who went to high school in the late 1980s had the barometer, we just didn't always realize it was because of Jake Ryan. Inevitably, we all gave up on the ideal of Jake. He was too perfect. And if he was out there, someone else was probably holding on to him for dear life.

Now I am married and 40 and living far away from the West Philadelphia. I married a man named Tord, not Jake. And though I gave up on the Jake Ryan barometer a long time ago I have to say Tord measures up pretty well. Sure, he doesn't have a Porsche and he's not rich but he is good-looking, nice, makes me laugh feel wonderful. So I guess you could say he cured me of Jake Ryan syndrome.

But reading 32 Candles is making me want to see Sixteen Candles again. I think the last time I saw it was five or six years ago on TCM. I'm in the mood for a little nostalgia. It might be time to buy it on dvd and giggle at the silliness of being 14 and pining for a boy who only exists in a Hollywood movie.