I was ten years old when Ferris Bueller’s Day Off hit the big screen at movie theaters across the country in 1986. By the following summer, my family had picked up a VHS copy of FBDO from a local video rental store’s used tape sale and my lifelong obsession with this film began.
That summer, I watched Ferris Bueller almost every single day. I longed to have a bedroom as cool as Ferris’s and imagined myself someday showing even a fraction of the charming charisma and cool confidence I saw in Ferris.
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| My cousins, visiting from another state, watching Grace inform Mr. Rooney that "Ferris Bueller's on line two!" (ca. 1986) |
With paper and pencil, I would sketch diagrams of my own bedroom in hopes of following the model established by Ferris – stereo equipment I’d never own scattered around my room with walls covered in posters, magazine clippings, and other visuals to stimulate my undiagnosed attention deficit disorder.
As the decade turned to the 90s, I entered high school and my pop culture tastes turned towards hip-hop and Cross Colours before the grunge movement settled in – but my desire to follow in Ferris’s footsteps always remained in the back of my mind. While I never pieced together a state of the art audio system in my bedroom, I did manage to cover ever square inch of my walls with enough imagery to keep a person busy for hours looking at (using the words of John Hughes describing Ferris’s bedroom in the DVD commentary) “lots of interesting unrelated stuff.”
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| My bedroom (ca. 1993) |
In May of 1994, my best friend and I were in the final days of our senior year of high school and, having talked about it for years, we decided to take a “Ferris Bueller day” of our own. Although we cut a few corners such as having our parents excuse us from school (Lame. I know.), we took off for the city (St. Louis) and planned our day around an afternoon baseball game at Busch Stadium between the Cardinals and the Cubs. For the record, the Cubs won the game on a 9th inning home run by Shawon Dunston.
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| Our St. Louis "Ferris Bueller day." (May 1994) |
Several years later, I had completed my college degree and I was working as a high school social studies teacher. Always trying to find new ways to keep the attention of my students, I offered up a challenge when it came time to take the semester final in my classes. Each student was allowed to bring in one question about Ferris Bueller's Day Off. If the class could stump me on 20% or more of their questions, they would be allowed a cheat sheet when they took their final. In the four semesters I worked at that particular school, my students never got a cheat sheet in any of my classes.
Before taking on a life of its own, The Ferris File started several years ago as a small project where I attempted to identify the items in Ferris’s bedroom. I shared my findings on my now-defunct personal blog and readers submitted additional details where major holes remained. Still, the focus never went beyond the low-hanging fruit – the things that were easy to see by casually watching the film.
. . .
Back in my college days, I once found myself at a karaoke bar in Osh Kosh, Wisconsin. One of the many patrons pouring cheap beer down their gullets that night had just finished one of the worst renditions of Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” I had ever heard in my life and, for whatever reason, that didn’t sit well with me.
I approached the DJ booth where anyone could add their name and preferred song to the queue of inebriated performers. I added my name and my song: Tim Lybarger / “Ice Ice Baby.”
Moments later I was called to the stage where I was handed a microphone as the familiar backing instrumental began to play. Skipping the usual, “Yo, VIP. Let’s kick it” intro, I addressed the crowd:
“I know somebody just did this song, but I’m gonna do it right.”
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| Doing it right. (ca. 2001) |
With that, I knocked out one of the greatest performances in karaoke history complete with others in attendance throwing hands in the air and waving them like they just didn’t care. I even finished the song with the best crowd-hyping I could conjure up including “Make money money! Make money money money!” and “Ain’t no party like and Osh Kosh party ‘cause an Osh Kosh party don’t stop,” respectively.
. . .
In the years since my initial blog post about Ferris Bueller, other efforts have been made to recreate his bedroom or to catalog its contents. Unfortunately, there are always corners cut and significant details neglected. With that in mind, I know others (including myself) have done this before, but with The Ferris File, I’m gonna do it right.
So here’s to you, Ferris Bueller. The Tom Sawyer of my generation who, for my entire life, has fed my free spirit, my distaste for daily structure, and my overall desire for the absolute best I can experience from every moment of this life I’m blessed to be living. I hope you find a joyful nostalgia as you remember one of my generation’s greatest folk heroes and his zest for life!