Things have changed very little since high school! I’ve always been kind of Wednesday Addams type of gal. You know – the type of gal who would have worn a black dress to prom if she’d bothered to even go to her prom (which I didn’t, more about that in a bit), wrote dark poems about murder when I was in high school, didn’t complain when my workplace adopted an all-black dress code three years ago. I asked I’d we’d still be allowed to wear all black, and was told yes, so I still wear black, occasionally adding knee socks striped in black, grey and white when it’s chilly and I wear a skirt. Strangely enough, I get lots of compliments on those socks!

So it should be of no surprise that I decided to see a movie at my local movie googleplex today and choose to see Heathers. Though I did not opt for an all black wardrobe today, I did not remotely blend in with all of the pink dress and shorts clad “hot girl summer” gals and Tik Tok disciples in the movie theater’s lobby today. Instead, I chuckled at jabs such as “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw,” “Why are you pulling my dick” spoken from one teenage girl to another teenage girl) and way too many more to list here.

Maybe the movie and its themes haven’t aged well, and maybe I haven’t aged well, either. School violence, shootings and bombings are definitely not joke, I get it. It was a different time. Not to mention the homophobic themes, which might not play well with “woke” audiences today. Again, it was a different time.

When I was 17 and this movie hit theaters in my area and very quickly left theaters, VHS was my only option. My dad surprised me one day several months later by bringing home a copy of Heathers from our video store (talk about something else that didn’t age well). Did I mention that my name is Heather?

Speaking of VHS, I spent my prom night with a couple of friends and watched Blue Velvet. One of those friends was a guy who’d asked me to my own prom (I declined his overture). Art imitating life? Was I pulling a Veronica Sawyer move? In the movie, she mentioned wanting to watch new releases on prom night with a misfit girl named Martha “Dumptruck.” Sounds good to me even now!

Years later, I would marry a man with a huge crush on Winona Ryder. He still has the same crush on her, and I have zero issues with that! Who am I to argue?