Stand by Me

I just can't bring myself to hate Will Wheaton.

Anyone who is a fan of the hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory knows that Will Wheaton has made a few guest appearances, playing himself/the arch nemesis of fan favorite Sheldon Cooper, a brilliant, yet quirky scientist who sees fellow humans as merely bacteria through the lens of a microscope. As kryptonite to Superman, Sheldon's weakness is Will Wheaton's character, Will Wheaton, a guy who is not smarter than Sheldon, but much craftier. As a former fan of Wheaton's character on Star Trek -that is until Wheaton scorned him for an autograph years back- Sheldon is constantly seeking his revenge, but always falls short due to Wheaton's mean-spirited tricks. My wife and I both love Sheldon, hence it would be so easy to hate Wheaton (the character or the actor.) I just can't do it because I remember him for a role he played in 1986, a role that in many ways shaped who I am today.

In the best movie of all time, Stand by Me (adapted from Steven King's novella The Body,) Wheaton plays a sensitive twelve-year-old named Gordie who is trying his best to cope with life after the death of his brother and in the midst of being invisible to his grieving parents who have apparently forgotten that they still have a living son. Either as an act of rebellion or simply to cope, he hangs out with a group of tough guys who are all on the way to nowhere. Chris (played by the late River Phoenix,) is the leader of the group who has to live down his bad family reputation. Teddy (played by Corey Feldman) is the spawn and near clone of a military man who after storming the beach at Normandy, went Section Eight and stuck his son's head to the stove, melting off his ears. The last in the group, Vern (Jerry O'Connell,) is the fat one that everyone picks on.

One hot summer afternoon, the four set out on an adventure to find the missing body of a boy in a neighboring town after Vern overhears some information about his whereabouts from his brother and his brother's friend who stumbled upon the dead body by a river twenty miles away. Armed with only the shirts on their backs, canteens, a pack of smokes, and a pistol, the four follow the railroad tracks to the location and find lots of trouble along the way: a junkyard dog taught to seek specific areas of the male body, a train that nearly runs them over on a bridge, and leaches in a cess pool that they fall into to name a few. But with all the trouble, the boys find out who they really are, they locate their inner-strength, and they come out men on the other side. It's a classic story of the initiation ritual.

I always identified with Gordie. No, I never had to deal with the type of tragedy he did, and I had the best parents in the world, but like him, I hung out with the wrong crowd, cussed like I thought real men did, and underachieved in school. I always knew I was a good kid, felt I was going to turn into a good man someday, but I suppose that this was my version of sowing my wild oats- instead of dating multiple girls, I misbehaved. And my parents thought that I was a perfect angel for the most part.

The movie had a huge impact on me. I can remember in junior high, hanging out at night with my best friend, C.J., one of the few good kids I palled around with. I would stay over at his house and we would stay up till all hours of the night, watching, rewinding, and rewatching Stand by Me. I swear we had every line memorized, cuss words and all. For that matter I still do.

But Gordie really stuck to me, hit close to home. In the story Gordie and Chris find a way out of the mire and become productive. Gordie becomes a writer, something Chris persuades him to follow because he had an obvious aptitude for the written word. Somewhere along the way I did the same. I guess I could say that my first real influence in writing was Gordie. I aspired to be the boy who could achieve the American dream.

In fact I so idolized Gordie and Stand by Me that my first novel, The Unwritten Rules of Moccasin Creek, was essentially a dedication to the movie. Four junior high boys on the last day of school take an unchapperoned camping trip to a local creek and with the aide of some necessary evils, fully enjoy acting like "adults" until the rains bring rising water and a threat to survival. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? If it ever sells, I hope Steven King will forgive me, or at least be honored that his brain child could be my spirit guide and inspiration.

So Will Wheaton will never be Sheldon Cooper's nemesis to me. He will never be some character on Star Trek that I don't even pretend to understand. He will never be any other character he has ever played. Will Wheaton will always be me.