Always Anna

For the past 20 years, I’ve held a deep, dark secret close to my heart, not daring to reveal to truth to anybody. The topic comes up all the time, but I always skate my way around telling the truth, if I don’t outright lie. But after reading Poop’s post yesterday about Gremlins (and the comments about Goonies), I feel the need to come clean. I just can’t take the lying and deception anymore… and I need to redeem myself.

(deep breath)

I’ve never seen Goonies.

(sigh…………)

As a child of the 80s, I know I’m a freak; I’m the only person in my age range that hasn’t seen this movie. But it’s not as easy to fix as you might think. Just imagine:

You’re hanging out with some friends, and the topic of 80s movies comes up. You, as usual, talk about the genius of Breakfast Club and 16 Candles, and everyone agrees. But then someone brings up Goonies… and everyone starts crying out quotes, reminiscing about the first time they saw the film. The first few times this conversation comes up, you think about mentioning that you haven’t seen it, but from the howls of laughter and blatant adoration, you can tell that you’ll only end up in one of those annoying “ohmigod you haven’t seen it how can that be” conversations that everyone feels the need to weigh in on. People end up spilling secrets about the movie, making it hard to drum up the excitement needed to actually see a movie. So, you just kind of smile and nod along knowingly during the conversation, waiting for the conversation to move on. This happens over and over and over again, over a period of 20 YEARS, until you are just so embarrassed that you haven’t seen it that you can no longer face yourself.

For a while after this happens, I think about renting Goonies. I look for it on TV, and when I skim other people’s movie collections, I look to see if they own it. Recently, I tried to see if it was available “on demand,” thinking that the brilliance of cable would correct this mistake in my film-watching history. But I never find it, and inevitably it falls from my mind.

But no more. I have a plan now. Next week - I will go the Mike’s Videos and rent Goonies. I may even rent Gremlins at the same time (I have no idea if the movies have anything in common, but since they are both gaping holes in my past, I think it’ll be good to get them both taken care of).

I feel better already.