St. Elmo's Fire

This is one of those movies that brings back memories because I was actually allowed to watch it when I was a kid. It was mostly by accident. When I was about 9 years old, I came downstairs one morning at 7 AM to get a drink of water, and my mom was just putting this movie into the VCR, and I took an inordinate amount of time to get a drink, and after 15 minutes, my mom realized I was still standing in the hallway watching the movie, and I thought she was going to tell me to go back upstairs to my room (because I didn't understand much, but I understood enough of what was happening onscreen to realize that this was a movie she probably didn't want me to watch) but she let me come sit on the couch and she watched it with me.

I didn't understand much about the movie back then, but I understood that as messed up as these seven people were, they were really good friends and they really cared about each other and they would drop everything else in their lives to help each other out if one of them was in trouble, and that stuck with me, even years later. I watched the movie again in college and I probably picked up on a lot more of what was going on, but it wasn't until I watched the movie AFTER college that I REALLY understood it, I think.

What it's like to be caught in-between being a college student and being a "real adult" (whatever THAT is) and how hard it can be to leave college days behind, especially when they were your "glory days" when you thought you had everything figured out. When Demi Moore says "I never thought I'd be this TIRED at 22," I FEEL it now in a way I didn't when I watched the movie when I was younger. This will probably always be one of my favorite movies because it explores friendship and love and independence and freedom and identity and growing up and moving on in a way I've never seen any other movie do (and I've seen a LOT of movies).