SINCERELY, JOHN HUGHES

If you haven't seen this link that's already all over the TweetBooks (and was even covered on NPR today), be sure to give it a look.

It's a lovely, heartfelt, heartbreaking account of a girl who wrote a fan letter to John Hughes back in high school, which turned into a sweet, personal, and staggeringly human pen-pal friendship. By the time I finished the article --and the incredible user comments that follow -- I was a sobbing mess.

There were certainly teen movies before Hughes, and teen movies after Hughes. But there's never been teen movies -- no, strike that, just movies, period -- that both embody a specific moment, yet still hold up years later, like the ones that he made.

I think I had a similar experience with Hughes' films as most people of my generation. For me, they were the first movies that, as a teenager, truly felt like "mine" -- not just product created to coax my hard-earned allowance out of my pocket, but stories with misfit characters I identified with and writing that I ached to emulate. He revealed humor and heartbreak and truths that seemed to actually be about me and my friends, like it'd been pulled directly from my head.

It's rare, as a know-it-all teenager, to really admire adults, or to find true inspiration and understanding from them. Like my admiration of Jim Henson before him, Hughes was one of those rare adults that spoke to me on my level, in a direct, honest, and instinctual way -- reminding me that I had potential, that my life was worth something, that my confusion about the world wasn't mine alone, and that overall, everything was going to turn out okay.