Leslie Gray Streeter

"A Dobler Looks At 40"

OK, Gen-Xers, it's official. We are bloody old.

Don't believe me? Today is the 40th birthday of John Cusack, also known as Lloyd Dobler, the lovingly awkward kickboxing hero of Say Anything. So that would mean that I, and the other children of the '80s who can not only quote this whole movie in our sleep but have photos of themselves in scary-bad '80s fashions and hair-dos just like Lloyd and his friends, are getting older, too.

Because if he's 40, that means we're...

Oh, snap.

Cusack, after whom I named my late favorite cat, had been in a bunch of other generation-defining flicks before 1989's Say Anything - he was one of the geeks in 16 Candles who pays to see Molly Ringwald's underwear in the boy's bathroom, and he starred in Better Off Dead, a not-great movie that's so surreal in an awful way that it's funny.

But Say Anything, man...that's the quintessential high school movie, because it's really about what happens after high school - after you stop being the Guy Everybody Thought You Were and get to figure out who you really are without everybody's dream-sucking expectations jackbooting you down.

And Lloyd, as least to me, is a symbol of that beautifully painfully aware state of being somewhere between everybody's perception of you, your perception of you, and the thing you are really becoming. Lloyd, a tall, tall guy who sometimes seems like he's trying to fold himself into his coat and not be noticed, understands that the people who love him think he's a well-meaning slacker, and the people who don't think he's weird and possibly dangerously misguided.

So when he asks out the hot valedictorian (Ione Skye), she surprises everyone by going, and then surprises herself by falling for him. But along the way there are so many desperately painful and truthful moments, like the disappointed look on Diane's face when she looks Lloyd up in her yearbook and realizes who she's said "yes' to over the phone, or the disdainful way her father regards him, or how his own friends think he's loony for even trying.

The lovely thing about Lloyd is how he puts himself out there, how he dares to make himself vulnerable to this girl, to his goofy friends, his kickboxing opponents and to himself, because he's finally stopped caring that he's supposed to be a loser.

I was a huge dork who asked the class president to the prom and was politely rebuffed, who tripped at my own debutante ball, who was a big honking mess. And I identified with Lloyd, because I eventually had to realize that I didn't have to be that mess anymore, that I was freeing myself from those morons I let define me. I think I'm still learning this...and I've got my face on a billboard, which doesn't mean I don't still go "Oh, geezy, people hate me."

Lloyd was a weirdo, was sorta stalky and had an odd intensity that was a little much if you weren't down with him. But he was sincere, sweet and most of all, loved himself and Diane enough to give it a shot, whether or not he looked like an idiot. I wish I could be that way all the time, even at 35. I guess that would mean I've grown up, just like John Cusack. Maybe we're not old. Just older.

And hopefully more Lloyd-like in all the good ways.