Can’t Buy Me Love

There’s no school tomorrow, so you let your older kids stay up way past their bedtime to watch a terrible Patrick Dempsey movie with you. And it’s even worse now than it was when you first saw it in 1987, and it was bad then. But the younger version of you – the one who hadn’t yet kissed a girl, much less had a real girlfriend – had empathized with the main character and therefore liked the movie in spite of his awareness that it sucked. And now you see your younger self in them, as they moan in agony at the embarrassing parts. And they cringe at all the unintentionally embarrassing stuff that’s unique to the 1980s. And they vibrate with joy at the happy ending. And as awful as the movie was, you can’t remember a time you enjoyed one more.