Narrator: Adolescence is kind of a screwy time. A time of hope and confusion. It's a race to find out who you really are. But if there's one thing teenager knows, it's this. Stated simply... if you want to be a star... you gotta have a car. Cars - the ultimate dream of every red-blooded American kid. Cars meant freedom, status, maturity. If you were old enough to drive, the world was your oyster. But, if you weren't... your world was more of a sardine - to really stretch an analogy. Without wheels, life was one indignity after another. A series of humiliations. And faced with these constant embarrassments... you look for any small way to elevate your status. The trick was to keep your friends jealous. Fact was, we all knew the bottom-line. To be truly free and functioning high-school men, what we needed... was a car.

Narrator: After all if growing up is war, then those friends who grew up with you deserve a special respect. The ones who stuck by you shoulder to shoulder in a time when nothing is certain when all life lay ahead and every road led home.

Narrator: All our young lives we search for someone to love. Someone who makes us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope. All the while wondering if somewhere, somehow, there's someone perfect, who might be searching for us.

Narrator: And as Hayley set off hand-in-hand with her new beau... one question naturally came to mind.
Ricky: What's he got that I don't?
Narrator: And of course, there was only one answer. He had her. That night was almost like a fairy tale. A night filled with magic... and love... and princesses. And pumpkins. Maybe it was fitting. In a land of insecurity, where curly-haired kids wanted straight hair, and heavy kids wanted to lose weight... and skinny ones wanted to gain it, and everybody wanted to be somebody else... the one true beauty... was the girl who simply knew herself. And was happy... with what she knew.

Narrator: And for some reason, maybe the way he said it, I began to understand. He wasn't giving me an order. My dad, was asking me for help. That morning, as I stood with the man who was my father... The son of my grandfather, the man who would one day be the grandfather of my sons...I realized something. That not all gifts are simple. That some battles are fought out of love.

Narrator: And I guess that's when I finally understood. I'd been part of Winnie's past, a past she wanted to forget. And now... there was nothing to do... but go. Only I didn't. I couldn't. There are things in a life that matter, things in a past which can't be denied. Winnie Cooper was part of me, and I was part of her. And no matter what, for as long as we lived, I knew I could never let her go.

Narrator: And I guess that's when I understood. For Mom and Dad, the party hadn't been a disaster. For as much as things were changing all around them... what Jack and Norma had - what drew people to their house every Christmas for sixteen years... was still the same. The thing they started out with. The one they'd never lose. My parents never did throw another Christmas bash. And that was OK - I guess. But I still think about those parties. What they stood for. A time before TV dinners and two-car families. And grass was green and we were young... and those nights when I'd lie awake in my bed... watching the light dance under my door. And listening... for my father's laugh.

Narrator: And I guess there was something in the way she said it that made me understand... Mom wasn't breaking my heart... she was breaking Paul's. Without breaking it. And in that moment, I began to realize a lot of things. Maybe my mother didn't go to the concert with Paul because she thought he was special... but because he thought she was special.

Narrator: And over the years, through good times and bad... through seasons of hope and change, he stood by us all. A silent partner. The first one to greet me at the door when I came home from my senior prom. The one who stared out our front window, on the day I left for college. And my mom said he stayed there for hours.

Narrator: And so it turned out to be a great birthday after all. I slow danced with Paul's Aunt Selma. I ate more than Mrs. Pfeiffer could have dreamed possible. And in a funny way... when I look back on it... I sorta feel like it was my bar mitzvah, too.

Narrator: And so Winnie and I had our one slow dance after all. But things wouldn't be the same between us. We were getting older. And whether we wanted it or not, the Lisa Berlinis and the Kirk McCrays were changing us by the minute. All we could do was close our eyes and wish that the slow song would never end.
Season 2

Narrator: And suddenly I got this funny feeling. Maybe I was blowing this whole thing out of proportion. I mean, Lisa wasn't going to laugh at me. And anyway, what if she did? Did it really matter? And that's when I knew what I had to do. I just had to pick up the phone... and call her.

Narrator: And that's how I started the great Kennedy junior high peace walk out of nineteen-sixty-nine. As I said... some men pursue greatness... and some men have greatness thrust upon them... while they're in the bathroom. I'm not sure we really changed anything that day. I suppose the war would have gone pretty much the same if we'd stayed in home room. But one thing would be different. We wouldn't have the memory to carry with us today, of eight-hundred children on a football field, singing. And... it wouldn't all be on our permanent record.

Narrator: And that's when I realized... there's all kinds of logic in this world. And a lot of it doesn't make any sense. That night, moved by the forces of teen logic, I'd stolen my dad's car... had a run-in with the police... a fight with my friends... and an accident. All in all... it was a great evening. Even if there were no Rolling Stones.

Narrator: And then I kissed her, on the eye, and then she kissed me, on the eye.