Last night, I clicked the wrong channel by accident and came face to face with the opening scene of Pretty In Pink on the Style Network. For me, that’s one of the top five movies I simply have to stop and watch no matter what else is going on.

Not just because Ducky and I shared the same hair style.

Not just because Andrew McCarthy and I were going to get married some day.

(And still might. Just saying.)

Those brat packers, they were the same age as me (or at least they played them in the movies). When Molly Ringwald was a geeky freshman in vintage clothes, I was a geeky freshman in vintage clothes. When she was heartbroken and feeling outcast for loving the wrong guy, I was heartbroken and feeling outcast for loving the wrong guy.

And that was the brilliance of John Hughes: He had the amazing ability to know the minds of every single teenager on the planet.

So within seconds of hearing OMD last night, my stomach knotted up, my palms got moist, and I was a hormonal, angsty, high school senior again–pissed that my boyfriend asked to bring another girl to the prom with us (she didn’t have a date, boo-hoo), hating my mother, loving my friends like they were family, filling journals with bad poetry, making up songs to the tune of Forever Young, and vaguely worried that life doesn’t get any better than this.