Forty Years Ago

Someone on BlueSky posted yesterday that the film Pretty in Pink was released 40 years ago.

I wouldn't have noticed this, except that it has a particular significance in my life. 

I decided to go to graduate school a bit over 40 years ago, and right around the time that movie came out, I was planning my trip to Madison and Minneapolis to check out the universities in those two cities. 

When I visited Minneapolis, probably just a few weeks later than this date in 1986, I had driven from the airport in Milwaukee in a rental car. (That meant I could also check out Madison on the way.) 

I stayed at a bed and breakfast in Minneapolis's Lowry Hill neighborhood, somewhere not too far from the Walker Art Center: I remember it was the cheapest room, and probably had been a maid's room in the house originally. The owners were very nice.

I think it was a Friday that I was there, and it was still wintery, although it was March. I decided to go to a movie after having spent the day on the University campus talking to faculty and staff. I looked at the ads and found that Pretty in Pink was playing at a theater called the Excelsior Dock Cinema. I had a map book of some kind, and I don't remember how I figured it out, but I drove there.

I remember going down Hennepin Avenue, then turning right in the Uptown area and going... and going and going and going. Because, unknown to me at the time, the Excelsior Dock is in Excelsior. On Lake Minnetonka. Which is pretty far west of Minneapolis:

Google Maps tells me the distance between the two locations is currently about 15 miles and a half-hour trip. I'm not sure if the roads between were as easily connected back then. And this was me, alone, in a completely unfamiliar place, at night, on somewhat icy roads. The return trip was even more fun than the trip out.

Not the best idea I ever had.

So that's what I think of when I think of Pretty in Pink. It was the beginning of what was supposed to be two years in graduate school and in the Twin Cities.

Instead, I spent about nine years in grad school (sort of), and I've now lived here for well over half my life. Things don't always turn out as we think they will.