Finny Knits

You may not know this about me, but I have a small obsession with 80's coming of age movies.

An obsession best illustrated by the behavior that occurs when I'm scrolling the guide and see, say, Dirty Dancing on TBS:

I immediately and simultaneously click SELECT and RECORD on the honkin cable remote, slide into prone position on the couch and scream, "Break off the knob!" to anyone within earshot. (Thus tipping everyone off to my 80's childhood when one actually had a TV with knobs). I then throw down the remote, declare the next two hours a wash and proceed to reminisce my way through the motion picture moments as though I'm 11/15/9 again without a care in the world aside from my bra size and current aching boy crushes.

It's all very becoming, I assure you.

The best part is that Bubba, the kind pitying soul that he is, allows me these moments of teenhood reflection without incident. Meaning, he doesn't try to change the channel back to Maximum Exposure (lovely show - BTW) or offer some sort of unwelcome channel choosing advice, he just lets me sit right there on the couch and stew in my recalled teenage angst.

Perhaps he thought, back in the day when it first happened, that it was only Dirty Dancing that warranted this particular behavior and that he might just let it pass as a cute girlfriend quirk. Much like my need to restack the coasters and fluff the couch pillows before we go to bed - not a deal-breaker, just low-grade neurotic habits.

Wrong.

It's developed into, what I can only assume, is a wife-sized warning beacon of lurking emotional issues better dealt with through micro popcorn and cable movie watching than in-depth conversation or a dicey intervention.

He is such a nice man.

And so, I try to limit these outbursts to obvious 80s gems: Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Say Anything, Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Ferris Bueller's Day Off .

But sometimes the not-as-obvious choices surface and I just have to see: Back to the Future, Pump up the Volume,or Earth Girls are Easy.

And at rare moments, I'll come across a not-from-the-80s-but-still-warrants-a-remote-throwdown flick, like any of the Father of the Bride movies, Pretty Woman or High Fidelity.

I've said all that so that I can say this:

I had a total High Fidelity moment on Saturday.

Well, it was more like a High Fidelity hour and twenty minutes - but you know.

After coming home from a month's worth of runs complaining about the dry toast on my iPod, Bubba took it upon himself to sit down with his bulging iTunes collection and make me a modern-day mixtape of carefully chosen songs. Then he loaded them onto the iPod, charged it up and sent me off with 3+ hours of rockin, hysterical and just plain good music to get me through my mileage.

SO JOHN CUSAK! Hello!

This may make me seem like a gooey awkward teenager in a grown-up shell, but it was rad. Really, it felt rad. I half wanted to crimp my hair and layer two pairs of socks to match my outfit after an experience like that.

I swear I spent a good portion of my hour+ replaying the final moments of High Fidelity when John Cusak puts on his big 80s headphones (yes, I know this movie was made in 2000) and tells the camera he knows what relationships are all about and he's going to make the best mixtape of his life for Laura. *Tear*Smile*Heartache* WOO!

Really, the best ever.

I wasn't sure how I'd return the favor since I didn't know how to recapture the joy and bliss of Red Dawn or Raising Arizona in quite the same way (nor did I want to spend more time with Red Dawn than necessary). But I do know how to make a mean lemon poppyseed cake, and I figure that's better than fleeing into the mountains and bringing a 'critter' into the world anyway.

So, I baked and reveled in the joy of my fancy made-just-for-me mixtape which I'm sure Bubba made while wearing big headphones, sitting in a cheesy leather chair and brooding in that typical tortured and misunderstood John Cusak way.

Thexy. And Rad.