My family has a slightly odd tradition. Once every summer, usually just before school resumes, we watch Ferris Bueller's Day Off together. We've been doing this since the summer before I started kindergarten at the very latest, which means the tradition is at least fourteen years old. This begs the question of what exactly in hell my parents were thinking in showing a PG-13 movie to a couple of preschoolers, but such would be a very minor example of the questionable judgment my parents have exhibited on a regular basis since I was born. My brother's school year has already begun, but he has no classes tomorrow and was home tonight, so once again we watched the iconic eighties masterpiece.
One of the most peculiar things that happens when my family watches Ferris Bueller's Day Off is that my father feels the inexplicable need to cheer on Mr. Rooney. My mother was a freaking high school administrator, and even she thinks the Rooney character in the movie is beyond creepy. Furthermore, the actor who portrayed Rooney ran afoul of the law a few years back. One might think that alone, if nothing else, would deter my father's enthusiasm for the shuddersome dean of students, but my dad wouldn't let a little thing like an actor taking nude pictures of a fourteen-year-old interfere with his bizarre pseudo-innate sense of right and wrong. Beyond that, we've certainly watched the movie enough times to know that he will not come out ahead in the end. Thus, rooting for Rooney is a lost cause . . . for anyone except my dad, that is.
Besides, it's not exactly as though my father has always been Mr.Prim and Proper Supporter of the Establishment. He was a touring rock guitarist in the eighties, for one thing, and we all know what sorts of things touring rock guitarists did back then to amuse themselves. I don't give him a great deal of grief about his past, but I do know he has one.
In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.*
* This has nothing to do with anything else I've written. It happens to be my favorite proverb, so I decided to share it.
What do you have against Rooney. besids the obvious, of course?
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