"Blinded By the Light" - No Box Office Success, But Gold For Me

I have seen the movie "Blinded by the Light" twice, and I cried for probably 30 minutes both times.  Here is why.

I grew up on a farm.  I wasn't a very social kid.  Between the time I was 5 and the time I was 12, I can recall going over to another kid's house on a "play date" three times.  All three times really ended badly.  (I do not recall a kid ever coming to my house).

When I was 5, a kid in my kindergraten class decided he liked me and wanted to be my friend.  (I think I had talked to him twice).  He invited me over to his farm.  After about 30 minutes playing in the house, he asked me if I wanted to go outside and play.  Sure.  We ended up about a mile away behind a stone wall in a farm field pretending we were in the army.  After about an hour, we had to walk back to the house, which took forever.  We had dinner and then the kid's mom took me home.  My mom asked what I had done for 3-4 hours.  I told her.  "WHAT?!?!?!  Did his mom know where you were?"  I have no idea.  Never went to that kid's house again.

When I was 10 I went to a kid's house who was in Cub Scouts with me and who lived in a small town..  I played cards in his room.  Then we got bored, and he asked me if I wanted to walk around town.  Not really (perhaps recalling my last such outing).  Oh, come on!  We picked up trash and mowed the lawn for some old guy who lived by himself who paid us like 75 cents total.  He did advise us that we probably shouldn't be walking around doing chores for people we did not know.  Then the kid and I had dinner and then I went home.  I just told my mom we played cards.  Never went there again.

When I was 12, I was the #1 baseball player in the county, and our Little League team was the second best team (I could pitch 3 innings a game, twice a week, there was one team who could beat us by beating our second pitcher).  Anyway, so after a great deal of urging, the other pitcher invited me over to his farm.  His mom monitored us a fair amount, much more than the other moms, but after a while we went out to the front lawn and played one on one football.  Now, I didn't want to play, and it seemed really stupid.  But the kid wanted to play, so we played.  About 30 minutes in, I tackled him at the 1 foot line.  I said, "Close enough.  That is a TD for you."  No, I have to earn it.  He hiked the ball to himself and ran straight ahead.  I let him score.  He lost his mind.  YOU HAVE TO TRY!  "Um, OK."  So I gave it like 75% effort, he plowed through me and scored.  As I lay on the ground, he dropped the ball and starrted punching me in the back of the head.  TRY!  TRY!!  I slept over.  But I never went back there again either.

So, as of 7th grade, I really had never had a friend, except for my little brother (who at the time was 10).  In 7th grade I hung out with a couple guys, Jeff and Jim, who basically liked to rip me for being a teacher's kid (my dad was a guidance counselor).  I was basically the "friend" in the group who was the lowest on the rung.  It sucked.  So, one day I was in art class.  Now, here is basically how any school art class always went for me:

Teacher:  "OK, today we will be making __________...  In the next 15 seconds I will show you how to make _______.  Then you will do that for the rest of class and I will grade your work."

Me:  Raises hand -- "Um, I cannot do what you are describing."

Teacher:  "Anyone can do this."

Then the teacher would walk around the class for 20 minutes and watch people do their work.  "Good job Mary!  Good Karl!  Excellent Steven!"  Then she would get to me.  "What are you trying to do there?"  I'd explain what I was doing.  "Oh.  Well....But look how well Jerry is doing!"

How terrible was I at art class?  I got 100% on all written tests, and I struggled to get above 80% in the class.  So yes, my art was regularly graded between 50-65%.  I tried.  I got absolutely zero instruction, zero encouragement, and I had two "friends" both of whom found it hilarious that I received failing art grades.

One day Jim and Jeff were ripping me for my shitty art efforts, and a voice came over for two tables away - "Hoops Maven, would you like to sit at our table?"  It was a guy named John W.  Now John W. I knew abolsutely nothing about.  But shit, yes!  I will come sit with you.  John W. "Look, man, those two are assholes.  They are not your friends.  They are not trying to help you.  Me and Chris here will be your friends."  And I was saved.

John W. was a huge Beatles fan.  Insane.  He wanted me to be a Beatles fan.  But I never really cared for the Beatles. 

But he stuck with me, and he was my friend in 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th grade.  In 10th grade he came up to me and said, "Look, I know you don't like the Beatles, but why don't you try Springsteen,  You will like Springsteen."  So he gave me Born to Run and I took it home and listened in my sister's room on her purple shag carpeting on her turntable.  It was wonderful.  I brought it back to him three days later.  "Look, Hoops Maven," said John W., "I don't need it.  I can always get another.  Just keep it and  listen to it.  It reminds me more of you anyway"

So I kept it, and I listened to "Thunder Road" and "Jungleland" and "She's the One," all songs that were written by a guy from Freehold, New Jersey.  A guy whose experience with life was far different than mine in rural New York.  But what I heard in the songs was a pretty consistent message of struggle and the desire to escape and the yearning for something better.  And then I bought "Dakness on the Edge of Town," which constantly drove home the message that there is a hardness to the world that can defeat you, but there is also hope, and there is also a better life and a better world.  A Promised Land.  That was followed by "The River" and all of its classic lines.  "I come from down in the valley, where Mister. when you're young, they bring you up to do, like your daddy done."  "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?"

And I recall listening to Springsteen when I finally got a girlfriend, and when life gradually became more hopeful.  I listened in college when I wanted to recall home, and I especially listened when I did not want to recall home. 

Anyway, watching Blinded by the Light (set in 1987, around 7 years after I found Bruce) I see through the young characters' eyes so many things that remind me of me:

- growing up where you definitely do not want to be or want to end up
-  hearing the powerful Springsteen lyrics for the first time
- FINALLY finding a girl to love you
- feeling such a crushing need to escape where you are
- wondering what will eventually become of you (my dad told me when I was 22 that he was pleasantly surprised that a spring intership had resulted in a summer job for me - "I never really thought anyone would ever want to hire you" -- in hindsight, this is pretty hilarous given that I was an honor student, captain of 2 sports teams and a kid who literally never got in trouble).

-  being pulled between a love of your parents and the desire to be nothing like your parents.

Look, it is a flawed movie.  It has a number of pretty avoidable errors.  But it is like sitting there and seeing myself grow up and like hearing the Springsteen songs for the first time through someone who is still young.  I am not sure I will ever watch the movie without a very deep emotional response. 

You see, it really was a town full of losers, and I was always pulling out of there to win.