The Outsiders...I heart you (esp. Ralph Macchio)

So...we got married thank God, and now we can get back to normal. I can't imagine what the hell life was like when you got married and didn't live together first and you were a virgin and everything...

It's nice to be married.

But one weird side effect is that, at least for me, I suddenly feel like a real adult. I mean, Kevin and I still basically live like one step above college students...I mean with our IKEA collection and our "found this on the side of the road" furniture and our glasses with "The Fonz" on them. But there was something about becoming a wife that has made me feel....old...and suddenly I am nostalgic for my kidhood...like, I'm talking 12, 13 years old. Like, back then.

I suppose it doesn't help that I'm teaching "The Outsiders" to my 7th graders right now. That takes me back...I failed a science test in 6th grade because I stayed up all night reading that book instead of studying about amoebas or whatever useless thing it was that I learned in science. After becoming obsessed with the book I became just as nuts about the film, starring unknowns at the time...Ladies, get ready for this roll call: Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise (wacko now, true, but not then), Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, and Emilio Estevez. Rowr. Ralph Macchio was my favorite...I know he was kinda dorky, but whatev.

It had been almost ten years since I'd seen it, but because a new director's cut was released this year, I bought the movie on Amazon about two weeks ago and, when it arrived, I kicked back with a bottle of white wine to watch.

K walked in when I was a little tipsy and just after the Johnny death scene and asked me what the hell was going on...I was kinda crying, and I just yelled out, "I'm having the time of my life here!!"

You see, I think there is a certain group of women a certain age who can remember exactly where they were the first time they heard the words "Let's do it for Johnny!" or "Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold." These greaser boys were so super fine in their denim jackets and their Converse and their dirty faces and their cigarettes and so on and so forth...

Basically, that movie is responsible for a whole bunch of women falling for the archetypical bad boy...sensitive yet tortured yet caring yet dangerous...that movie is why I spent roughly 15 years in search of my very own bad boy...and the thing is...well...in movies, that dude always turns out to be a really great catch and an awesome boyfriend and everything. But in the real world more often than not a guy like that most likely is gonna give you chlamydia and break up with you...soo......

Anyway, not sure where this is going. But it's good to be married to a good boy, it's good to be an adult who remembers being a kid, and after all these years Ralph Macchio as Johnny Cade still gets me giggly.

Stay gold, ladies.