What Can You Say About A 25 Year Old Girl That Died?

That we all wanted to be her, except for the dying part. That we all wanted to be as smart as she was around guys. That we all wanted someone to love us like that. The year was 1970 and I was 14 years old.

“What the hell makes you smart?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t go for coffee with you.”
“Listen — I wouldn’t ask you.”
“That,” she replied, “is what makes you stupid.”

Can you see why I, as a fourteen year old girl, would want to be Ali MacGraw? Well, Ali MacGraw as Jenny in Love Story. She kicked ass. She was beautiful. She got to kiss Ryan O’Neill. All things that I was not. In fact none of us newly minted teens really came even close. But we could dream.

“ You’re gonna flunk out if you don’t study”

“I am studying.”

“Bullshit. You’re looking at my legs.”

“You know, Jenny, you’re not that great looking.”

“I know. But can I help it if you think so?”

Erich Segal wrote that dialogue pre Gilmore Girls. Hell, he wrote it when the poster on everyone’s wall said “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” Sorry, but I think I just threw up a little in my mouth remembering that gem. The one thing everyone associates with Love Story may have been the shlockiest line of all time, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Who knows? Maybe that’s true, but love doesn’t mean you don’t say it.

Maybe this movie gave me some unrealistic ideas about love. I went to see the movie with a bunch of kids. It was an organized teen outing. I remember the guy who sat next to me on purpose. I remember that it was winter, just like in the movie and that on the train ride home he held my hand. He held my hand as we walked home in the snow through the park near where we lived. I remember thinking, is this happening to me? And for a little while I felt just like her.

You don’t talk about Love Story without talking about the hat. Every dreamy eyed girl bought that hat. Grown women too. Since we all wore our hair long and parted in the middle, hat head wasn’t an issue. I wonder how fashion designers must have felt. They were supposed to tell us what to wear and it wasn’t supposed to be an actual hat that Ali MacGraw had at home and wore on set. Power to the people and probably Seventeen magazine.

So, “What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?” Yes, that’s exactly what you can say.