Cara: Hey! Send me a Christmas card?
Kevin: I will.
Narrator: But, I didn't. After all, when you're sixteen, eight months is a lifetime. And time had moved on. For both of us.

Mr. Aidem: It's not that bad - having people who care for you, you know?
Narrator: I guess Ben understood something. Something that I'd learn... in time. But me? I was just a sixteen-year-old guy. And the way I saw it... there were still a lot of mastodons yet to be slayed.

Mr. Botner: Now, Botner's rules for study hall. Numero uno -
Kevin: Ah man.
Mr. Botner: Arnold! Do you have a problem?
Kevin: No....I....ah
Mr. Botner: Oh come on, Arnold. I'm sure whatever you have to say is very important. After all, we can wait here as long as it takes. Even if it's all evening.

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

Narrator: And then that man... "Mr. Pencil stubs and Alka-Seltzer"... "Mr. Pay the bills and go to work"... said something I'll never forget.
Jack: Let me tell ya something, Kev... it's not easy being a hero.
Narrator: And I knew he wasn't talking about Bobby Riddle. He was talking... about himself. Some heroes pass through your life and disappear in a flash. You get over it. But the good ones, the real ones, the ones who count - stay with you for the long haul. The thing is, after all these years, I couldn't tell you the score of that game. What I remember is... sitting in that diner, up late... being young... drinking coffee with the only real hero I ever knew. My Dad - Jack Arnold. Number one.

Narrator: And there you have it. The awful truth, the bottom line. When it comes to love... there's no simple fix. You're out there, on your own, and maybe all you can do is hang on...and hope for the best. And lead with your heart. When you're sixteen, passions run high. A simple misunderstanding becomes a matter of life or death. You live from moment to moment. And sometimes, when you're sixteen, the only way to get your love back... is to take it.
Season 6

Narrator: And, there ya had it. Lunch. Where romances bloomed and died... and returned again. Like last weeks leftover tuna casserole. Where the fondest dreams and aspirations of young adults reached their zenith... and the quest for knowledge became its own reward. Sure... maybe all those dramas played out over lunch weren't really dramas after all. Still looking back... they sure seemed that way.

Narrator: As I sat there, listening to my brother's pain... and the lies he told to cover it... I didn't know what to do. I knew I wanted to be with Sandy. Holding her in my arms - dancing with her. But in the end... I stayed with my brother... because, after all... he was... my brother.

Narrator: But the thing is, that was all we did. Maybe it was happening too fast. Maybe we wanted to hold on to what we had. Or maybe we both knew there were other things we had to find before we found each other. All we really knew for sure was, as we sat there, looking out over the lights of the town where we had grown up together, it all felt right. It all felt...perfect.

Narrator: By the time you've made it to age sixteen, you pretty much know all there is to know. About history, philosophy - the world. About life. There was virtually no situation you can't handle. Yeah, you're on top of your game - the pinnacle of poise, the essence of cool. No doubt about it - from the right thing to wear, to the right place to sit, to the right person to sit with. At sixteen, you pretty much learned it all. Well, almost all. OK. So there's one subject you're just as dumb about as you ever were. Yeah - love. Like I said, at sixteen - you've learned nothing. Nothing at all.

Narrator: Every culture has its own rites of passage. Ways of marking that leap from childhood... to manhood. Complex rituals... weird dances... acts of courage and survival. It's a tradition as old as civilization. Or... as recent as crabgrass. Fact! In the suburbs... a boy's first steps towards manhood start behind a lawnmower. Still, for me, at sixteen, lawn care had given way to something much, much, more important. The driver's license. The thing that separates the boys... from the men. And so on and so forth. But the truth was, by the spring of tenth grade, it was time to put the mower in mothballs. Forget the crabgrass. Make the jump from two cylinders... to real horsepower.

Narrator: Every year when I was a kid, my parents threw a Christmas party. Everybody in the neighborhood came. Dad played the "big cheese"... Mom played "Donna Reed"... and a really stupid time was had by all. It was a time when hopes were high. When the neighborhood was young. It was fun, before fun got so... complicated. Before life got so... simple.

Narrator: Genetics. The heartbeat of heredity... the lynch-pin of the family. Parents supply their children with the same basic building blocks. The same blood types. The same involuntary responses. The same essential gene-pool. Yet, despite all this potential for similarity... sometimes things get confused. Sometimes, Mother Nature, in all her wry sense of humor... goes off and creates... total and complete opposites. Like me and my brother, Wayne. It was hard to believe we ever occupied the same womb. The only thing we had in common... was our complete and utter contempt for one another. All in all... my brother and I were just two different branches on the family tree. Me, the good branch... Wayne... the dead-end.