In the sixth grade, my best friend and I became Crossing Guards at Columbus Elementary School. Besides wearing a sweater with stripes, and leading a brigade of 10-year-olds carrying rifle-sized "Stop" signs, we got a free pass to the movies on Saturday afternoon. I remember experiencing my first excruciating menstrual cramps while someone's mom drove a posse of budding estrogen to the theater. On those Saturday afternoons I saw the greatest "teenage" movies ever made and that I still cherish, including, "Sixteen Candles," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Pretty In Pink."

If fortune reigned anything down on my adolescence it was to have me become a teenager in the heyday of John Hughes' career. His movies are the mashed potatoes and frozen yogurt (comfort food) of my cultural consumption. I had no idea until recently, maybe when he died, that his films might have helped sustain my innocence and faith in my feelings just a little while longer before they got crushed by the jackhammer of the adult world, one he perceived and expressed with the same sense of excruciating sadness.

I watched "Breakfast Club" again last night on Netflix while lying in bed and trying to fall asleep. I kept thinking I'd stop, but I had to watch it till the end. Molly Ringwald and Anthony Michael Hall brought so much authenticity, I think their performances got written off as being themselves. Teenagers cutting through the crap of life and bonding around genuine feelings, ones they probably really felt at the time, and fears. Are movies terrible now? Are we so accustomed to drug-addicted actors and reality television stars who are so intoxicated by their own celebrity they couldn't access a vulnerable feeling in a thousand years of therapy? Or, has our culture so numbed out on technology, sex, and crappy food that we can't even remember what connection with another human being really is?

I walked out of the "Breakfast Club" as a 12-year-old feeling a vague sense of hope for my life. It had nourished me, gave me faith, and some support in accepting my own humanity. Maybe I wouldn't have to be beautiful and genius to find love in the world. Maybe I could love my wounds and scars and let them guide me to a life that meant something.

And then I grew up.

Just for today, I am grateful for John Hughes.