How The Goonies Destroyed My Shoes

Photo of the author, Cher Finver

The year is 1985. At ten, I envy the girls that have parents who can afford to gift them Swatch watches and Guess jeans. I am pissed that Coke dare change its formula, and unbeknownst to her, Madonna is my Sex Ed teacher. I aspire to have shiny, smooth hair the length of Crystal Gayle’s and to be as desired as Heather Locklear. My mother puts my mousey brown hair in pigtails with red yarn bows and having had developed breasts earlier than my peers is over-shadowed by one of the worst overbites that you have ever seen.

I am a bit clumsy, bad at sports, and I am often picked last or close to it. Unless you have been there, you can’t imagine the humiliation of being deemed “less than” can create. I do not have many friends. The ones I do have are Korean, and this is when I discover you can eat seaweed. It is better than I expected it to be. I am madly, deeply in love with a guy named Ryan. I call my local radio station regularly until they finally dedicate a song to him on the radio. The next day my heart breaks as I hear he is now dating one of my friends.

I am a follower, not a leader. I do very well in English but horrible in math. My best friend is my brother, who is two years my junior. We are left home alone a lot because Mom is either working, on a date, or at a casino.

1985 is the year my brother and I are taken from Long Island, New York to Las Vegas, Nevada. I am told by my mother not to call much attention to myself. We move every six to twelve months, changing schools so that my biological dad would not find me. I just want to fit in. I yearn for stability, attention, and beautiful things.

1985 is also the year The Goonies is released. According to IMDb, The Goonies is about a group of young misfits who discover an accident map and set out on an adventure to find a legendary pirate’s long-lost treasure.

My issue with The Goonies starts at the playground at our first low-rent run-down Las Vegas apartment. As a grown-up, I know now that play area was a poor excuse for one, but for a ten-year-old, it was where the kids met and played. It was where the adults left us alone and where we would complain about headaches caused by the constant aroma of fabric softener carried by the nearby coin-operated laundry room.

My brother and I travel back to New York every summer so my brother could visit his father. This agreement is the only reason my brother’s dad agreed to let our mom leave the state of New York. My brother’s father had been like a dad to me until he cheated on our mom and left. That was when his dad started to pull away from me.

I am not his biological child, and he has moved on from our mother. If my brother went to New York, our mother insisted that I go too, but I knew I was not wanted there. We would partake in activities my brother enjoyed, like a trip into the city to Madison Square Garden for wrestling but not to a nearby movie theatre.

When my brother and I returned to Las Vegas in the summer of 1985, all my group could talk about is The Goonies. I lie and say I had seen the movie so I can pretend to play out The Goonies on the playground along with everyone else.

“Cher, you can be Data,” one of the Koreans says dismissively.

“Okay,” I pause, trying to remain casual, “What does she do again?”

I am not a good liar, and, oh, by the way, I quickly learn Data is a boy. My friends suddenly realize that I have not seen the movie, and like a scene out of Game of Thrones, I am banished from the playground. As I run crying past the laundry room, toward my apartment, it happens – an incident that will instantly become a core memory.

Now, I assume we have all played with Play-Doh. I will also guess many have made Play-Doh spaghetti. Picture if you will, my translucent jelly shoes of the awesome 80s, running and then stepping in a big pile of fresh, wet dog poop as it seeps through the many holes in my shoes.

The poop looks like Play-Doh, stuffed in the noodle-making machine, pouring out. In an attempt to end my misery, I run faster as my shoes and the shit continue to make spaghetti. I get home, put my feet in the tub, and attempt one of the grossest clean-ups you have ever seen. Years later, after the necessary amount of therapy, I did see The Goonies. I am sorry, but I felt it did not live up to the hype.

As a grown woman in her mid-40s now who has made peace with her past, reconnected with her own father, knows who she is, and what she will tolerate, I wish I could go back to that day. I would remind myself these girls are not real friends, and who cares if I had not seen that movie yet? Had I not lied, maybe I could put on a pair of jelly shoes to relive my youth without gagging - with or without a spoon.