The Unattainable Ideal of Lloyd Dobler

,Allegra and I were talking about movies from the eighties and nineties we adored and whether they were still watchable today. I had seen Overboard a few days ago which I love and now want to write something for Goldie Hawn. For those who don't remember, an amnesiac socialite is led to believe she is the wife and mother of a handyman and his brood of wild little boys. Also present for this conversation was Allegra's niece, Marisol, who is thirty. Allegra and I are in our sixties. 

"I've never seen it, but I've heard it was not very good, maybe even stupid. What's it about?" Marisol mused. 

"Not much, really," I admitted. "A handful of dryer lint has more substance than the script to Overboard. That's not why it's such a good movie.  The cast is so good every one of them threw themselves into the project.  It's a romantic/happy family fairy tale with a happily ever after that you can't help but cheer for even if the premise is a little creepy."

"A LITTLE creepy?"

Allegra clicked her tongue, "Babygirl, I can think of much creepier movies from when we were young.  We didn't think they were bad at the time..." she glanced over at me. "Well, most of us didn't think they were that bad then.  Now?  Things change." 

"My hypothetical daughter would not make me happy if she brought home stalkery  Lloyd Dobler." Hey, I didn't say, "Fight me."

Allegra nodded.  "Yeah, him.  Especially him." 

At the time, he was America's Boyfriend. The unambitious but cute slacker who set his sites on an Ivy League bound Diane Court (Ione Skye) was considered the romantic ideal.  In the interest of disclosure, I need to admit that I have never been able to watch this all the way through. I have also heard interviews with John Cusack, who played Dobler, and he sounded like he was over it

Still, there are many more people: male and female and all along the spectrum in between who have sighed and wished someone would replicate that scene just for them.

Well. Someone did that for me.

Before I tell this story, let me say young people don't seem to take into account how curated and choreographed those perfect romantic moments are. What happened came from the heart. It was sweet and naive and one of those things that could never exist in life as a calculated bit of perfection.

I lived on the third floor of the middle hallway of Elizabeth Mynders Hall at Memphis State University. The first floor had a large, wraparound porch and a roof that protruded far enough out to make it impossible for anyone to see into the widows of the dorm rooms unless they stood across the street in the plaza area of Jones Hall. This was either a trick of vernacular architecture or an attempt at protecting the flowers of Southern womanhood inside  or possibly both.

Being one of those flowers of Southern womanhood, my room was decorated with the popular accoutrements of the day, pastel electronics designed to look like vintage Bakelite appliances. Among those items was a foot long, shell pink cassette player.  

These are two of the moving parts of this saga to be kept in mind.

When my boyfriend at the time borrowed my cassette player, I thought little of it. He was working at a prop shop for a movie that was being made in Memphis and I figured he wanted to listen to music while he was onsite. My player was much smaller than most boom boxes and more portable.  I had no idea that my guy did not own a boom box. 

This came to my attention the following very, VERY early Monday morning.  At stupid o'clock, I heard someone shouting my name.  I looked out one of the front windows to see my boyfriend standing in the   plaza area across the street from my dorm.  He was dressed in blue jeans, Chucks, a white t-shirt, and a khaki trench coat, just like Lloyd Dobler. 

The only thing he was missing was the boom box.  Instead he was holding my little pink cassette player over his head. He fumbled tofind the play button and then a few seconds later, I could barely hear "Livin' On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi. The window to the room on the floor just below me flew open and I heard its occupant yell, "You're playing the wrong song!"   As this was happening, two members of MSU's campus police slow walked to my guy, took the player from his hands, turned it off, and one of them tucked it under his arm as they walked away. 

Poor Dude.

I went downstairs and we talked for a while on the front porch. Then he went home. Going to campus police the next day to claim my cassette player was fun. We were together for another two years and neither of us ever mentioned that night. 

So the next time you look wistfully at some movie moment, remember two things: Lloyd Dobler was creepy and would not be your first choice for a son-in-law. The real thing is always better.