Fragments of Fantasy: Staffer attempts to recreate coming-of-age media

As much as I wish my life were like a John Hughes film, I must begrudgingly concede that it’s nothing resembling such. 

We’ve all fantasized about escaping to the city like Ferris Bueller, dressing Manhattan chic like Serena van der Woodsen or attending a party at the Animal House. It’s easy to imagine our lives resembling those depicted in the shows and films we love. 

But unfortunately reality isn’t so generous to allow this.  

Speaking with experience, since earlier this week I put this idealization to the test. I decided to kidnap a couple of my friends and take them on a few surprise adventures to see if movie magic can happen in real life — spoiler alert, it was an underwhelming experience. 

The first step in most coming-of-age-movies is the element of surprise. My friends found me standing on their front porches around eight o’clock on a Monday night — not a typical time of week we hang out. I instructed them to tell their parents that they were going with me to get ice cream and discuss an upcoming Chemistry exam. 

Fragments of this story were true, we did discuss academics for a moment or two and drove past multiple ice cream shops. But eventually it became clear that we didn’t intend to focus on either of those activities. 

My first intention was to surprise them with a tour of holiday lights in my most favorite neighborhoods of Kansas City — Mission Hills and Brookside. 

However, once they’d caught on, they started making suggestions which is where all the trouble started and the magic began to fade. They pleaded like small children to visit specific streets and houses, but couldn’t for the lives of them remember how to get there. 

That’s one thing they never have to worry about in coming-of-age movies — directions! But in my experience, while belting the chorus to whatever song Taylor Swift has most recently come out with, Siri sees it as an opportune moment to interrupt and instruct me to make a left in 800 feet. 

While we saw a number of extravagant light displays, there were far more dead ends and U-turns. 

The next stop on our night-of-adventures was the iconic Liberty Memorial. We’d come here a myriad of times before and it’s never failed to inspire some token main-character behavior. 

However, we’d never visited the landmark on a day as bitterly cold as it was this past week. The 32 degree temperature was yet another unwelcome reality check, especially since not all of us were dressed appropriately. One of which being a relatively thin hoodie and sleep shorts proved to be a less than adequate decision — and unlike in the movies, there was no big, strong, devastatingly handsome man to loan us his jacket. 

Nevertheless, we managed to have a moment of silent, peaceful shivering while observing the skyline before beelining back to the warm car. 

Our third and final movie-esque activity was inspired by the “Perks of Being a Wallflower” trademark: speeding down the desolate road with your head out the window. 

I’ll have to say that this was the activity I was most looking forward to when planning these adventures. 

There seemed to be nothing that could go wrong — find a long empty road, turn the volume up to full blast and get your head out that window. 

Since we were downtown, it proved to be difficult to find a smooth and empty road. After a few minutes of searching we managed to find a relatively acceptable road and cued up “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears — a classic if you ask me. 

Then came time for the real excitement of the adventure — speeding down the road with the better part of my body out the window. 

Perhaps I need to loosen my grasp on reality, but I did not find this experience enjoyable. The moment I poked my head out the window the cold air hit my throat and lungs like knives. And since the road we were driving on was not without its various bumps and potholes, I simply couldn’t shake the feeling that I was going to go tumbling out into the road at any second. 

To top it all off, right as the tempo of the song began to speed up my mother began blowing up my phone demanding to know where I was and why the trip to Andy’s was taking so long.  

The night was pretty much over after parents started getting suspicious of our whereabouts. We immediately headed home to put on pimple cream and go to bed — another aspect never shown in coming-of-age films!

The fact is that we can never fully escape reality, much to our dismay it always comes to find us eventually. However, in my experience, I’ve had dozens of perfectly wonderful nights with my friends regardless of reality-checks. 

We all need to modify our fantasies of real life mirroring those depicted in our favorite movies and find the balance between fantasy and reality.