Ferris Bueller's Night Out

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it" – attributed to 'Ferris – I feel a fever coming on – Bueller'
-quoted in the New Trier High School Class of 1986 30^th Reunion Yearbook

"What do I remember most about the Class of '86? I don't know...but for some reason, a Rottweiler comes to mind."
- Retired School Superintendent Edward R. Rooney, when interviewed by the New Trier High School Class of '86 30^th Reunion Committee

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So, yeah, basically once upon a time there was a land of milk and honey that existed on the shores of a great lake, and vast, amber waves of grain beckoned beyond all her fair horizons. The land was called Illinois, or so French Catholic missionaries reported in their first written descriptions of the region. In time a great city would rise along the water's edge: Chicago, home to great football teams, art museums and wondrous architecture the envy of the world, as well as rail-yards and slaughterhouses and even Abe Froman's Wide World of Sausages. Chicago, a veritable microcosm of the United States, home to a peculiar suburb called Winnetka, long noted in film and literature as the locus of an ongoing experiment in teenaged angst, a petri dish ladled full of jock straps and tampons, testosterone, Colt 45 Malt Liquor and 'The Pill.' Winnetka, a glorious village if ever there was one, with a Ferrari in every other garage, a swimming pool in every back yard, and a Starbucks on every corner.

Winnetka's high school, New Trier, voices a respectable, even a noble motto: 'To commit minds to inquiry, hearts to compassion, and lives to the service of humanity.' Which no doubt explains why so many of her graduates go on to Ivy League business schools and end up working for investment banks and hedge funds. And which in no way explains why one graduate of the Class of '86 opted instead to go to the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

His name was, of course, Ferris Bueller.

Ferris 'the free spirit' Bueller. Voted least likely to succeed by his peers – twice – but we'll get back to Ferris in a minute, because you already know him well enough.

The great love of Ferris Bueller's life in those faraway days was his best friend, Cameron Frye. There wasn't a day that passed in high school when Ferris and Cameron weren't together, and they did all the things boys in high school usually do together: they listened to music together, talked about girls, went to movies together, talked about girls and, well, you get the picture. A hypochondriac by nature, a child of neglect by circumstance, Cameron was destined for great things – until he failed to gain admission to an Ivy League school. Without the intervention of an uncle in Los Angeles, it's doubtful he'd have made it into the University of Southern California, but three weeks after graduation he received his admissions letter and for the first time began thinking the unthinkable – about a Life After Ferris.

The other great love of Ferris Bueller's life was, of course, Sloane Peterson. They broke up two weeks after graduation, though she dated Cameron for the rest of that summer, and when Cameron took off for LA she split for Oregon, headed to Reed College. After graduation, she lived in a commune north of Coos Bay for several years, then moved to Portland and took classes to become a licensed massage therapist, and when not so engaged taught classes on using crystals to deal with illnesses as varied as osteoporosis and hemorrhoids.

No account of Ferris Bueller's life would be complete without mention of his beloved sister Jeannie. Within a week of Ferris's graduation she disappeared, apparently on the back of a Harley Softail with a leather-jacketed young man – and by all accounts headed south at a high rate of speed. Tom Bueller, their father, was summoned to Nogales, Arizona in early August to bail her out on drug smuggling charges after five balloons of heroin were discovered "up there" by an inquisitive border patrol agent. Her companion on the Harley disappeared over the border and was never heard from again, and eventually, after her return home, she went on to Loyola Chicago where she took a degree in English Lit. Gaining a PhD from Northwestern, she eventually took a position at a boarding school in western Massachusetts teaching Women's Studies, and lived with a domestic partner who coached the girl's wrestling team.

Of course, the center of Ferris Bueller's universe was his mother, Katie, and so she remained, right up to events leading to the night in question.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

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When Ferris arrived in Madison in August, 1986, he had not a care in the world, yet when he was placed on academic probation after mid-terms were posted, he had his second epiphany. The kind of revelation that occurs after one's father advises that funds will be cut off if at least a 3.0 GPA be maintained.

Oh, yes. His first epiphany? Need you ask? Abe Froman? The Art Museum? Twist and Shout? A crumbled Ferrari?

Ring any bells, yet?

Anyway, he went home for Christmas holding a 3.1 – which annoyed his little sister no end – and so he and Cameron lost no time getting caught up on life in the fast lane. Cameron had decided that Hollywood was the life for him and told Ferris he'd decided to major in screenwriting, perhaps take a minor in philosophy, or maybe SCUBA diving. When Cameron asked where Ferris might concentrate his studies, he replied, seriously, that dental hygiene was the thing.

"Dental hygiene?" Cameron replied – almost cross-eyed.

"Yes, Cameron. I want to explore the endless ways female pubic hair can be used as dental floss."

"Ah. I think I see where you're headed with this."

When his father asked what he might be interested in, Ferris could only offer a sort of rough, non-committal shrug – followed by a grunting noise that sounded a little like: "Ahum-grumble-ort."

"Feel a fever coming on, son?"

"Ahum-grumble-ort."

"Of course, you know how I feel about the law. Can't go wrong there. And don't forget, Ferris, law school is where the big bucks are."

"Ahum-grumble-ort."

"Then again, we could use a physician in the family."

"Ahum-grumble-ort-fart."

Yet in the greater scheme of the unfolding universe, these things have a way of working themselves out on their own, and with no help from us at all. Fascinated by the horoscope Jeannie had shown him that very day, he decided then and there that he wanted to take a class in Astrology, assuming UW offered such a course, and when he showed up (late, as usual) for registration four days into the new year he signed up for AST 101.

Which was, as luck would have it, Astronomy 101. The course was titled Celestial Mechanics, which Bueller thought must have something to do with horoscopes, but the text was thicker than all three Chicago area phone books put together, and the first chapter didn't mention stars in Uranus...

And yet, oddly enough, Bueller loved the class, even the physics – which after 17 years in Winnetka offered a certitude he found at once comforting and exhilarating. He continued to go home for Christmas, always giving his father a tie, his mother a box of chocolates, and Jeannie a scarf of some sort. Cameron's father divorced his third wife somewhere in there, and Sloane had literally disappeared from their world by then.

Eight years later he left the University of Arizona Tucson with a PhD in Astronomy – bound for the University of Hawaii and Mauna Kea's pristine airs. Not exactly a lawyer or physician, he knew, but he'd found his niche in the world and was reasonably happy. Cameron settled in at a production company in Beverly Hills – cleaning up scripts for a few years, then working as an assistant director on a Spielberg film. After that his career took off, but a curious thing happened along the way.

Sloane Peterson showed up one night, broke and at an end. Cameron picked her up and dusted her off, carried her along for a few months, but then she disappeared again. Cameron didn't tell Ferris about the encounter, though the spent quite a bit of time together, usually over the holidays. Jeannie and his folks came out to LA for one Christmas, and they all went to Disneyland together, even Cameron, who took them to the 33 Club and on all the rides, yet Ferris thought Jeannie looked frail that trip, almost broken.

She too was living alone; her first year teaching was proving difficult, and to Ferris she seemed different. She's been almost bi-polar during high school; full of anger one day, love the next, yet after her Mexican excursion she'd grown inward looking, perpetually introspective, which he always suspected was why she majored in literature. He recalled Chopin's The Awakening on her bookcase, thought about all her banked down anger and wondered where she'd end up.

He bought a house far out Manoa Road the next year, and life slipped into patterns of a new familiar. Years passed and he dated occasionally, came close to falling in love with a grad student once – but nothing came of the affair and he fully retreated into his work after that. One day he looked up and noticed a little gray in his hair, and because he worked at night many times a week his skin had grown pale. He went home for his father's seventieth birthday and was unsettled when he saw echoes of himself in his father's wizened features, yet as he looked around the old house on Walden Road he realized he was looking at everything still missing from his life.

Would he take a wife, perhaps? Become father to a child, make all the memories he realized you're supposed to make as you work your way through life? Memories he'd yet make? And then the thought hit him: why had he never thought these things important before? Was it some sort of biological clock ticking away – or something more?

Was there really something missing from his life? He'd had more than a few academic accomplishments already, with one book published and another in the pipeline – but nothing like what his father had created in this house on Walden Road. No, he spent his days talking about the cosmological origins of the universe, his nights out under the stars – looking for those telltale signs of 'beginnings' – "but what about my origins, my beginnings? What does my solitary existence say about the end I've apparently chosen?"

"Or did I choose this life?"

He looked at his parents after that awakening with something akin to respect in his eyes, maybe for the first time, too, and yet even so he wondered when he'd stopped taking 'all this' for granted? When he realized how hard they'd worked to create this life of theirs? When he began to think about how far short of their mark he'd fallen?

He thought of Cameron and Sloane and that faraway day, pretending to be Abe Froman, Jeannie's furious, passive-aggressive pursuit, lip-syncing his way through the parade downtown...and a passing moment of grief came for him as he drifted among memories of that day...

Had he been lip-syncing his way through life even then? Pretending to be the rebel, but – what had he been if not a proverbial 'rebel without a clue?' He was one of the most popular professors on campus, but in the end, what, really, did that say about his life? Wasn't he still just pretending, still being the class clown? Trying to be popular, never realizing how utterly vacuous pretenders really are?

He looked at his father's house – at his father's life – and knew the answer to that and a million other questions had been staring him right in the face all his life. He left Winnetka with the repercussions of that moment, his awakening, haunting him all the way back to Hawaii, and Ferris Bueller knew it was finally time to take stock of life.

Which of course he promptly forgot to do.

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It was December already, with Christmas break just around the corner, now only three weeks off. Three weeks until he could just kick back and relax. Maybe call Cameron and hop over to LaLaLand, take his new Ferrari out for a spin up the PCH...?

But not today. No, today he was holding a review session for his senior seminar, and picking up research papers from his freshman survey class, which meant he'd be grading papers all through the night and into tomorrow. "Better run by the Don Quijote for some fresh coffee beans and cookies before class," he said to himself, "and stop by the ATM for some cash..."

He felt his pocket vibrate and sighed.

"Time flies when you're havin' fun, darlin'," he said to the latest love of his life – a brand new iPhone – as he pulled it from his pocket. He looked at the screen, wondered if he had time to talk to his mother and decided to take the call.

"Mom?"

"Ferris?"

"Yeah, Mom. What's up?"

"Ferris, we need you to come home..."

Something in the tone of her voice. Something different, full of concern.

"Mom? What is it? Is it Dad?"

Then his father's voice was on the line and he felt a flood of relief: "Ferris, I have you booked on Virgin tomorrow morning, you should be getting an email with the information."

"Dad, I have papers to grade..."

"Bring 'em with you."

"Mom?"

"One of us will meet you at the baggage claim. Bring warm clothes."

"Mom?"

But the line was dead and he looked at the time, decided he didn't have any to spare so grabbed his messenger bag – and his phone – and walked out to his teal blue Prius. He drove in on Oahu Avenue, took University to the faculty lot off Maile and parked, then walked across campus to the mall and on into the Physical Sciences Building. He was still ten minutes early so went to his office and turned on his iMac, checked his email and saw the entry from Virgin America. He opened it, printed out the boarding passes and entered flight times on his phone, then grabbed his bag and walked to the seminar room, all the while wondering what the hell was going on at home...

After the review session he walked with his TA and a couple of students over to The Nook and ordered his ritual pork belly Benedict; he sat with them and listened quietly while they probed each other for answers to tricky problems – all while looking to him for hints about what might or might not be on the final exam – and he toyed with them mercilessly, then explained to his TA that he had to leave in the morning for a family emergency.

"Really?" she asked. "Nothing serious, I hope."

He shrugged, then explained the nature of the call. She was bright, cute as could be and had made it known more than once she was willing to help him make it through the night. "Br-r-r...Chicago," she shivered, "in December. That's my idea of hell."

He laughed at that, remembered the wind coming off the lake, but he also remembered all those faraway Christmases. The snow falling on silent trees, the street after street of Christmas lights, Santa perched on front porches handing out candy to kids driven through the neighborhood by young parents dreaming about Christmases to come. Driving to his grandparents house on Christmas Morning, the second round of opening presents, turkey and his grandmothers stuffing, looking at his grandfather – wondering what it was like to be so old.

"Oh, it's not all that bad back there," Bueller said to the girl – almost wistfully. "I don't even remember the cold. In fact, I'm not sure it ever bothered me."

"I guess you can get used to anything, huh?"

"Maybe," he said, but he was thinking about Jeannie just then, and how they'd teased one another about stealing the other's Christmas presents, about sitting by the tree on Christmas Eve when they were little, speculating who was getting what from Santa that year.

"You look kind of lost...what are you thinking about?"

"My kid sister."

"The one back in Massachusetts?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"What about?"

"How I used to torment her...how we tried to tear each other down all the time."

"I think that's what brothers and sisters are supposed to do to one another."

"Is it?"

"Well, I had two brothers, and they sure tried to tear me apart more than once."

"I wish I never had," he said, and the thought startled him. "I'd like to know her now, know about her life." He sighed as he looked up through the ceiling to the veil of stars beyond. "She's all I'll have after my parents are gone."

'Truer words,' the girl said to herself, 'have never been spoken.' She looked at him for a while, then turned away quietly from his words. She'd never known a more self-isolated soul, not ever, and she found herself wondering once again what had happened to him. And who had hurt him so much that he had turned to the silence of the stars for solace.

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He looked out over the wing to the city he could just make out through patchy clouds hovering under the aircraft, to yellow streetlights and little patchwork quilts of dark gray sprinkled over a snowy landscape, and he had to think hard to remember the last time he'd been in Chicago in winter. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again the Boeing was out over the lake – and fleet-footed memory ran from him. The jet made another turn – hard this time, and to the right – and he smiled at Orion, now high over South Bend and the turn of the lake. Another turn and the Airbus settled onto it's final approach, and he looked out at the Navy Pier and the Field Museum beyond the wingtip, at the planetarium and Soldier Field between sprints through clouds – until they entered a solid wall of snow and everything disappeared.

Just seconds passed, really, and then he saw the reassuring pulse of strobes ahead, guiding them down, then the landing lights popped on and he saw how heavy the snow really was...what did he think?

Blinding?

'Is the way ahead really so obscure?' he wondered. 'Is this what Shakespeare meant when he spoke of winter and discontent in the same breath?'

He'd tried not to think about what lay ahead, the sense of urgency in his mother's voice, the raw edge of latent anger in his father's.

Then the ground rushed up and he heard tires making contact with the earth, the engines as they roared their arrival to the world, and he saw the terminal as they turned off the runway – the sight filling him with dread, and hope. He was seated two rows from the front door, yet waited until people from the last rows made their way off before standing, and he walked up the Jetway wondering if he should make his way to a jet returning to Hawaii within the hour. He sighed, put his coat on and tramped off towards the baggage claim, depressed and unsure of himself.

His father was standing in the baggage claim, waiting impatiently as he looked at the nearly empty carousel circling endlessly around the room. When they saw each other, dark shadows passed over their faces as they struggled with passing memory.

"Ah, there you are," his father said – looking at his watch. "You know, I got you a seat by the front so we could avoid all this hoo-hah."

"I had to help a little old lady off the plane, Dad."

His father stared at him, then shook his head. "I guess the idea growing up..." – but Tom Bueller stopped, held his tongue in check as he stuck out his right hand out.

Ferris looked at it, then took his father's hand in his own, and he thought the exchange perfectly summed up their relationship. There'd never been intimacy between them, and he realized there never would be anything like that between them – beyond a series a constantly shifting grudge matches. They walked in silence out to his Audi, and he put his bag in the trunk while his father got in and started the car, but he turned and looked at the falling snow, at all the holiday travelers coming and going, and he wondered if they felt as barren inside as he did just then.