Can you stand one more column about movies? 

Well, not movies per se. More like the memories surrounding them. 

Memory is tricky. As the BBC’s Science Focus explains, it can be affected by many things. 

When my husband and I were dating, I called him one night, shocked to have learned the Austrian singer of “Rock Me Amadeus,” Falco, had been dead for years.  

“You knew that,” my husband said. “I called you and told you.” 

Except I’m pretty sure my response would have been, “Who the hell is this?” because Falco died a full year before my husband and I met. 

And I have vibrant memories of sitting in my childhood living room, watching Anita Hill testify in the Clarence Thomas hearings. I remember discussing Hill’s testimony with my grandmother. 

Which would have made a great ghost story because my grandmother died a month nearly to the day before Hill testified. In fact, she died two days before Thomas’s confirmation hearings even began. 

So when I tell you I have clear, distinct memories of discussing The Lost Boys with my husband, those memories exist and are precious to me. 

And also entirely false. 

The Lost Boys, the epic Joel Schumacher vampire movie, is a seminal movie for us Gen Xers. The Coreys, Jason Patric, Jami Gertz? I discovered Kiefer Sutherland through The Lost Boys. I discovered Dianne Wiest. 

I remember my grandmother telling me Dianne Wiest was in Hannah and Her Sisters. 

Or do I? 

Now, I don’t know who I think I’m married to.  

In what universe did I think my outdoorsy, practical, horror-eschewing husband watched — and discussed at length — The Lost Boys? 

But we’ve talked about the long-haired, shirtless guy playing saxophone on the pier. We’ve talked about the Coreys. We’ve chanted “Michael, Michael” when we eat Chinese food. 

“I just realized,” I said to my husband the other day, “that the vampire-slaying brothers in The Lost Boys are Edgar and Allan. Like Edgar Allan Poe.” 

“I’ve never seen The Lost Boys,” he said.  

I was flabbergasted. How can he — a Gen Xer like me — not have seen The Lost Boys? What about the times we’ve discussed it? The saxophone? Michael? 

“No,” my husband said.  

I instantly flashed to 2009. John Hughes, the writer and director of classics like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off — and my adolescence — had just died. My high school besties and I decided to have a drink in his honor. 

“I’ve never seen any of his films,” my husband said as I headed out the door. 

I mean, kick a girl while she’s down. 

He never saw a John Hughes movie? Never saw a John Hughes movie. Ever? Never identified with outcast Andie in Pretty in Pink? Never empathized with Cameron, the hapless nobody best friends with the charming and Teflon titular Ferris?  

I knew I wanted to stay home to raise my kids because of Mr. Mom. Knew someday a good guy would love the quirky me because of Some Kind of Wonderful. My husband — no parts of his life were impacted by John Hughes? At all? 

And now — now, in addition to mourning John Hughes at the bar with my friends, I’d have to tell them I married an anarchist clueless to the meaning of a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal?  

Worse, I’d procreated with him. 

“Didn’t you discuss this with him before you got married?” my girlfriend asked.  

Fair question. 

But he has long extolled the musical genius of the Pretty in Pink soundtrack. Flimsy, I know. But combine that with our shared generation and you understand my misconception. 

Then there are the other pop culture archetypes of the 80s my husband and I have discussed. We’ve talked about ThunderCats, He-Man, and Transformers – both the toy and cartoon.  

We agree the Ghostbusters cartoon is flawless. That A New Hope is sacred. That he — my husband — is, in fact, Alex P. Keaton. 

And my husband is the first person I ever knew outside of my brother to have seen the cartoon Star Blazers. He is one of three people on the planet who understands when I say I wanted to be Nova when I grew up. 

After The Lost Boys revelation, I questioned myself.  

Not about Star Blazers, A New Hope, or Alex P. Keaton. 

I don’t want to know if I was wrong about any of that. 

No. What I questioned was the 2009 John Hughes conversation. Was I remembering it correctly? 

“Yes,” my husband said. “I’ve never seen a John Hughes movie. That I know of.” 

Aha!  

I rattled off a few John Hughes movies. Of course, he’d seen Pretty in Pink — he bought the soundtrack first, but he’d seen the movie. And Ferris. And I know he’s a fan of the National Lampoon Vacation movies. 

Or do I? 

You might think I should question my very marriage. How well do I know this guy? A quarter century together, kids, Star Blazers. 

I refuse to examine the validity of our marriage. 

My husband has sat attentively, for two decades-plus, while I prattled about film theory, symbolism in horror, real-life relationships growing from co-starring roles. 

He’s my Jake Ryan. 

Even if he has no idea what that means.