The Sheila Variations

How 'Eight is Enough' changed my life

I am a big fan of celebrity crushes, as I know I have said here before. I've had them since I've been aware of celebrities and I have not given them up in my old age. I have fine-tuned the "celebrity crush" into a work of ART. I should give seminars about how to do them properly.

I think the first one - (and it was a toss-up between Lance "James at 15" Kerwin and Ralph Macchio) - was Ralph Macchio. The Macchio crush was more transformational, in terms of my development as a human being, so I'll go with that one.

Now I am talking about pre Karate Kid Ralph Macchio. Very important distinction. I am talking about his Eight is Enough oeuvre. When he hit it huge with Karate Kid, I felt oddly jealous about it. I felt proprietary towards him. I had been with him BACK THEN. Before it was COOL. I somehow liked it better when he was just my little secret.

Some people don't even remember his brilliant one-season stint on Eight is Enough. Ah, but that is probably because they gave up on the show long before he arrived. Macchio was obviously brought on as "young blood" - to draw in an audience like me - horny love-sick pre-teenagers. The ratings were probably down. Bringing in a troubled young cute teenager was an obvious ploy to jumpstart the show again.

To me, at 12 years old, the older siblings (David, Mary, Susan, Joannie, Nancy, Elizabeth and Tommy) were too sophisticated, too slick, and a little bit ikky, frankly. David, the oldest, was a particularly disturbing individual, I thought. With his pearly whites and his feathered hair, and his jobs, and his independence. He had too much of a fake-tan sleazoid veneer. His teeth didn’t fool me. The guy was a creep.

The girls all wore shiny lip gloss, shoulder pads, or frightening workout outfits involving spandex and lilac leotard ensembles ... The push-up bra was not in existence in the Bradford house apparently, so the sisters all had droopy sloopy-shouldered silhouettes that just added to the skeezy vibe.

There were cars pulling in and out of the driveway. There were teenage problems of the 17 and 18 year old variety. I could not relate.

And Bowl-Cut Nicholas was not as cute as everyone thought he was, and I found him plain old nauseating.

I needed something else. Someone who hit my demographic. Someone ... a guy ... who was juuuuuust the age I needed him to be ...

And so along came Jeremy Andretti, played by Ralph Macchio. Jeremy was the orphaned nephew of Abby (played by Betty Buckley, of course. She couldn’t ever be “alone in the moonlight” in the Bradford house, sadly. No damn privacy). The Bradford family opened their hearts and their home to the troubled teenager, who got into fights, who was sullen, uncommunicative … . The first time I laid eyes on him, I was GONE. Put a fork in Sheila. She is DONE. He was everything I found attractive - although I didn't know it then, being only 12. It was this weird awakening, watching Jeremy in action. My heart just fluttered open to this character. He was sensitive, but he covered it up with a tough outer shell. It would take a very special person (me???) to crack that shell. His shyness and his toughness were a killer combo.

I wouldn't realize until later that that shy/tough thing he had going on was in a long long continuum of movie stars who have made careers out of mixing those two qualities together. Tough-yet-sensitive hard-boiled-outer-shell guys. Gary Cooper. James Cagney. Cary Grant in some of his movies. Humphrey Bogart. You name it. Jeremy Andretti needed to be tough - not because he was mean, or callous - but because he felt too much. He was too vulnerable.

I very quickly became addicted to Eight is Enough. I was crushed when Jeremy's storyline was not the feature. I suffered through the ikky slick-lipglossed storylines of the older siblings, and the sickeningly sweet Bowl-Cut storylines, waiting, waiting, week after week ... for Jeremy to take the spotlight.

This crush was a secret. It was so powerful that it actually embarrassed me. It was a runaway train - and this is now a familiar sensation to me, years later. I now know the signs, and I no longer judge myself for who I am, and that I do this, on occasion. I still get embarrassed sometimes, when I get swept away like this, but I figure there are worse things in life than this habit of mine.

Here are the tell-tale signs: (and I love many actors - but only a few have brought on these almost visceral responses)

1. A vague ache in the pit of my stomach. A yearning. A hunger. For what? For intimacy, closeness, connection.

2. A desire to literally crawl through the television. I can not get close enough. This sensation is usually strongest at the first onslaught of the crush - and it does pass - leaving other things in its wake.

3. A dissolution of the intellect, and a feeling of expansion into the global, the personal, the universal.

I have come to believe that these crushes blossom just when I need them most. They usually come once a year. And I ride the wave until it subsides. The crush arrives usually at a low moment - when I need fortitude - when I need a light at the end of the tunnel. The crush helps me to hold on, to hold out hope - that someday, someday, the closeness I yearn for will manifest in real life - and not just in re-runs of Eight is Fucking Enough, for God's sake. This is why I revere actors so much. This is what they can give us - potentially. This is what certain actors (and certain performances) have given me. Something to hang on to ... when the going gets rough ...

I discovered Ralph Macchio as Jeremy Andretti when I was at the lowest of the lowest of points. I was in junior high. I didn't really take to adolescence, shall we say. I was a fish out of water in the machinations of 8th grade. I was bruised and battered very quickly from rejection from boys - and not just rejection - but outright laughter in my face, when I would ask them to dance, what have you. (I'm not exaggerating. I was "that girl", the pariah of the school, for one awful year). I was pudgy. My clothes were all wrong. My Xena jeans didn't look the same on me as they did on Cris D., the goddess of junior high. Kids crank called my house and shouted insults about my clothes into my ear. I was probably in a very deep depression and didn't even know it. I found it hard to get out of bed in the morning. I would cry on the way to school. Not a good sign.

In the middle of that howling wilderness, there was one particular episode of Eight is Enough that I can say, without too much exaggeration, changed my life. Not outwardly - but inwardly. I could feel the shift take place. I got my eyes above the muck, basically. I saw further. I was in the gutter - but I got a glimpse of the stars. That kind of thing.

I remember that episode almost shot for shot, and I have not seen it since it was on that first time - in 1980 or whatever it was. So that gives you some idea of its lasting impact.

Here's how the episode opened:

In a movie theatre. We can see that the movie being shown is an old Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers classic. There are the two of them, dancing across the marble floor - or - floating, actually - her dress graceful, light - he elegant, lithe ... Then we cut to the audience of the movie theatre - the people watching this movie. And there is Ralph (Jeremy) - with his beautiful face - watching, totally engrossed. He's eating popcorn, and he is totally into the movie.

And two seats away from him sits a teenage girl, also by herself, also engrossed, also chomping on popcorn.

After the film, the two of them somehow strike up a conversation in the lobby - they both just rave, unselfconsciously, about their love for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers - and how much they love those old movies - and how cool it is that the local movie theatre would run them as matinees ...

The girl reveals that she has just moved to the town, and is a little nervous about starting at the high school on Monday. He is obviously very excited that she is going to be going to his school - he feels a bond with this girl. There's a sweet connection there. They part - with him telling her that he will keep his eye out for her on Monday. Teenage romance shivers in the air!

But what was so deadly for me watching it - what hooked me in so deeply - was that their connection was not based on lust - which I couldn't relate to yet. I wasn't there, developmentally. No - it was a shared interest in something, a common passion. This was devastating.

DEVASTATING.

The episode moves on. They see each other at school. They have sweet encounters in the hall. They meet up "by coincidence" at the next Saturday matinee of a Fred Astaire movie. Only this time, they sit together, side by side, sharing popcorn, occasionally grinning at each other. Having a passion is so much fun when you can share it with someone who "gets" it.

I'm telling you: I died a million little deaths watching all of this. I ached! I yearned! I burned up inside - like a pubescent Tennessee Williams character. I had so much to give, so much of myself to share - but nowhere to put it yet. Holding all of that stuff back actually hurt. So I put all of it into Ralph Macchio. He could take it.

Then - inevitably - the conflict in the episode came up. Turns out that Jeremy's interest in Fred Astaire was something he hid from his friends - it was too embarrassing. With his friends, he played video games, watched sports, played football. He could never admit to liking old movies with DANCE NUMBERS in them to his friends. He needed to save face. As long as his little Saturday-matinee romance was kept secret from his friends - he was cool with it.

But alas, Jeremy, life doesn't work out that way, does it?

Of course - one day she came up to him in the cafeteria, where he was sitting with his group of friends. Oh, the hostility of the high school cafeteria! The caste system! The Darwinian brutality! She says to him - right in front of his friends - with a big friendly smile - "Hi! What are you doing Saturday? They're playing 'Swingtime'!"

She has now broken a rule. She didn't even know it was a rule. She was like me. I found myself in the world of junior high, with all these rules, all these boundaries - and I most certainly did not get the memo. She didn't know that he was ashamed of that part of himself, that he needed to keep it secret from his buddies.

And - of course - he blows her off. Publicly. He makes believe he doesn't even know what she is talking about. It is a complete and utter rejection. His friends snicker. Ruthlessly. She stands up there, by them, alone, shamed - The expression on her face ... she is so baffled, so hurt. He has crushed her. She walks away, mortified, with the taunting voices of his group of friends imitating her girl voice echoing after her, "Swingtime is playing! Swingtime is playing!"

I knew her pain! I had had my feelings snickered at! I had had my intensity scorned!

And yet - watching - I wanted to crawl through the television and yell at her: NO! He does like you! He's just embarrassed! He can't admit to liking those movies in front of his friends! He does like you - and that's why he rejected you!

And so - I ached for him as well. He was choosing cool indifferent nonchalance (and loneliness, by the way) over unafraid involvement. Not just with her. But with who he really was. This was a TRAGEDY.

I saw people making those choices all around me every day in junior high. Clipping off the unacceptable parts of themselves to fit in with the pack. It seemed "the thing" to do - but I found it enormously painful. I just couldn't manage it.

So. Because Jeremy was really a senstive person beneath the asshole exterior - he felt horrible about how he had treated her. Horrible. So he tries to talk to her in the hallways. He tries to apologize. She rejects him. He tries again. She ignores him. She is a stony wall, an ice princess. She was a real hard-ass, that one. i didn't think that I could withstand his heartfelt apologies. I would cave. But I learned from watching her. No one should shame you the way he shamed her. Especially if he had opened up in private. His behavior was unacceptable. A girl has to set her own standards for how she wants to be treated. And she shouldn't accept anything less. A man needs to be able to stand up to his friends and say, "This is who I am. Deal." It is not okay any other way. My response to this came from my loneliness. From feeling so left out. I was so eager for attention from any boy that I would take the SCRAPS from the table ... rather than wait for someone willing to sit down and have a whole meal with me. I watched the girl on Eight is Enough say "no" to his scraps. This was a mind-blower. Truly. I am still learning that lesson. She would not allow him to compartmentalize her, and only acknowledge her existence on Saturday afternoons.

So finally comes the climax of the episode. And after watching it - I lived it over and over and over in my head, I obsessed on it, I fixated on it, I held onto it with fists ...

She was walking along on the sidewalk in front of the school. The campus was crowded with students. Of course. His declaration (when it came) needed to be that public. It had to be that much of a shedding. This is a well-known formula, of course, used in countless movies to great success: the public revelation of true emotion, the declaration of love made in front of a crowd -- The final expression of commitment is not just made between two people privately, but involves the whole world. It has to. It's like a wedding ceremony: the bond between two human beings is enough of a big deal that it must be made publicly to have any real weight.

So he runs up to her and tries to talk to her. She staunchly keeps walking on, clutching her books to her chest. He walks along beside her, apologizing, ignoring the rejection. He has lost the indifference - Now it matters more to him to tell her the truth - and he doesn't care who sees.

The entire exchange was heart-crackingly attractive.

She remains impervious - he hurt her too much - she finally shouts at him, "Leave me alone!!" She marches off without him, leaving him standing there with a crestfallen look on his face. People are staring. The two of them are making a scene. He doesn't care anymore. And now he is the one who has been publicly rejected and shamed.

And in that moment, the transformation occurs. He leaps into the unknown - he tosses himself off the cliff, into the fearless abyss. I'm not sure, I have no empirical evidence of this, no quote to back up my theory - but I would warrant a guess that this next moment alone is responsible for Ralph Macchio's enormous success a couple of years later in major motion pictures. If I had been a casting director, and I had seen that scene - I would have thought: "That kid could carry a romantic film." There was a seismic shift during the scene - and by the end of it, he became a viable leading man. You think I'm kidding? I'm not kidding. I'm dead serious. Why else would I remember the scene so clearly 25 feckin' years later?

Because it was unbelievably effective.

She walks away, with an air of finality. He stands, stunned, silent - and then, on impulse, he jumps up on a nearby bench, and blurts out, in tune, at the top of his lungs: "I won't dance! Don't ask me!"

She stops dead in her tracks - and slowly looks back at him - shocked. All the watching students start snickering, giggling. He doesn't care. He stays up on the bench, and sings out - at top volume: "I won't dance, don't ask me! I won't dance Madame with you! My heart won't let my feet do things that they should do!" He starts to dance around up on the bench, even as the small mocking crowd gathers. Her face ... staring up at him ... she is dumbfounded. I got goosebumps watching.

He leaps off the bench - and dances toward her - still singing: "You know what, you're lovely you know what, you're so lovely! And you know what you do to me!" She's embarrassed - but she's blushing - she doesn't know what to do - She tries to remain impervious, unmoved - she gets her nerve back, and turns her back on him, starting to stalk off. (I gasped, watching. The fortitude! The strength of self! To resist!!)

But eventually, of course, his singing and dancing breaks her down. But it's more than that. It's more about his fearlessness in publicly admitting his feelings for her - and even deeper than that: his fearlessness in admitting who he is. He drops the pretense. You can see her crack a smile, try to hold it back, and finally fail. She can't stop smiling.

He is now dancing around her - still singing - serenading her, really, in front of the whole school. "When you dance, you're charming and you're gentle -Specially when you do the Continental - But this feeling isn't purely mental -For heaven rest us, I'm not asbestos ... And that's why I won't dance, why should I?" Finally - he takes her in his arms. It is a startling moment. You could feel the gasp in the crowd. He has never touched her before then. And he waltzes her around, awkwardly, goofily - she's laughing now, out loud - and he finishes the song with a big finale, dipping her body over backwards, like an old pro.

The crowd (naturally) bursts into applause.

Oh, the surge of triumph I felt! The beautiful surge of affirmation!

I don't know why this one episode made such a deep impression, but it did. I thought about it for days. I actually wrote it out into short story form, so I could elaborate on the feelings of both parties. I wanted to live it. I couldn't - but I lived it out in my mind.

The message was, obviously, that being yourself, and admitting who you are, and not changing yourself for your friends, is far superior to lying in order to save face. This just sliced through me like a laser.

Especially, it must be admitted, because it was the boy doing this - in that particular story. It was the boy who had to give all that up, and just be fearless. In my limited and very very painful experience in junior high, boys traveled in packs, were aloof and game-y with me, and acted embarrassed when I asked them to dance. I was always in such a state of uncertainty and pain when it came to the boys I liked. It was barely pleasurable. No. It wasn't pleasurable at all. It was awful. (I know now that boys had their own brand of hard time during those years - but that only came with perspective, and getting older. While I was in it, I had none of that. I felt like boys were on another planet. A planet I sooooo wanted to visit. But they didn't want me there.) So - the thought that a BOY my age - could be interested in me the way Jeremy was interested in her - and that a boy could throw caution to the wind in front of his peers - was so attractive to me, so powerful, that I basically melted into a hot quivering puddle of longing and hope that lasted for MONTHS. It blew my mind.

What it said to me was (outside of the celebrity crush aspect of the whole thing) - don't just look at the surface of things. Don't passively accept the aloofness of the boys you like - they might be afraid, or shy, or don't want to seem goofy to their firends. Differentiate between who they were with their friends and who they were when you got them alone. But also: it said to me: Do not accept being treated cruelly. Even if he's cute and you like him so much. Do not chip away at yourself like that.

It said to me, too, (and this is where it gets global):

Hang on.

Just hang on.

There may not be a boy in your life right now who would leap on a park bench for you - but hang on. There will be.

The loneliness you feel right now shall pass. This, too, shall pass.

The girl Jeremy fell for in the episode was not a babe. She had long straight hair and wore long skirts. You didn't have to change who you are to get a boy interested in you (the lesson I learned from Grease). You just had to be yourself, and be true to yourself - and continue shining your own particular light with its own particular wattage - and someone will see that light eventually and be drawn to it. If you try to change youself though, and fit into what you think is the ideal - if you try to adjust yourself to what you think guys want - then you will not be being truthful, and the right kind of guy for you will not be able to find his way to you.

That one episode of Eight is Enough got me through many dark hours in junior high. It burned me up inside - a fire that eventually went out - but a fire I have never forgotten. That one episode helped me not be ashamed of my own individual passions, to not put pressure on myself to fit into the round hole of the junior high social agenda. Maybe if I stuck to my own path, and kept cultivating my own personality, and expressing my own individual interests - fearlessly - without apology - then a Jeremy type might be in my future.

Keep going, Sheila. You're okay. You're doing okay.

There will be someone out there for you. There will.

I still believe that.

Thanks, Ralph Macchio, for what you gave me in your wonderful performance in that one episode.

And thanks, too, to the creators of Eight is Enough - for realizing that eight kids were actually not enough.

Thank you for realizing that you needed one more.

Posted by sheila