Goonies can’t die if they’ve never been born!

Posted on March 18, 2008 and filed under Parenting and Other Misnomers..., Articles

By, Sonja Stewart

My bestest friends came up to visit me a little over a week ago. It was an amazing time. I got to show them around my favorite hang outs and just spend some really good time with them.

The great thing, though, to me, was to be able to show them the Goonie tour. I live in

Astoria, OR, where Goonies was filmed, and all through high school, we were the Goonies. “Goonies never die!” we wrote that in each other’s yearbooks. It was our “thing;” the thing that made us, “us.”

I’m driving them through the town and saying “here’s where that scene was filmed, and here’s the house,” and so on. Lori, who is also my IncMoms partner, pipes in from the back seat, “oh yeah, and like in Kindergarten Cop…”

Yes, Kindergarten Cop was filmed here too. My friends live across the yard from the Kindergarten Cop house. Woo hoo. (I’m being sarcastic here.) Goonies! I reiterate. Goonies, Goonies, Goonies, that’s what’s the big deal here!

You may think I’m being obsessive. And you most probably are right, but for me, the film, Goonies, (I can write that name a million times and never tire…) came out at just the right time in my life. It gave me hope, joy and, yes, tears. “This one was my wish. And it didn’t come true…so I’m taking it back. I’m taking them all back!” Good ol’Corey Feldman.

Sorry, I got distracted. So, I put up with Lori’s continual changing of the subject every time I brought up Goonies stuff, and just passed it off as her genuine love for Kindergarten Flop. Then came the confession. It went like this:

“Guys, I have something to tell you that’s shocking.” Natalie and I braced each other for bad news. “Ok,” we encouraged her…

“I have never seen Goonies.”

My mouth dropped open.

“Oh, that’s no big deal, I was expecting something worse,” Natalie responded.

“I wasn’t.” I said.

I literally went into shock. At first I was quiet. Then my brain went over little moments in high school, at the fair, in the parking lot, the beach, the moves…everytime we mentioned Goonies…and all along, she faked it.

Natalie was obviously unbothered. “Why didn’t you watch it before you came?” she asked. “Then you wouldn’t have had to tell us.”

Yes, Lori, why? Why, why, WHY? I wondered. Betrayal. No it was worse than that. She wasn’t a, gulp, Goonie!

Well, we had to fix it, and fix it fast. Natalie and I ran out to the video store and rented that sucker up (as well as Kindergarten Shlop) and we watched it that night.

You know, it was kind of cool to be there with her the first time she watched Goonies. It was way cooler than just reminiscing over the film. I got to be with Lori when she became a Goonie. How cool is that?! She’s more Goonie than I am now…I saw the movie with my step dad.

How un-Goonie of me.

Fellow Goonies can contact me Sonja @ IncMoms. com