It Should Have Been The Deer!

We were fourteen years old. Rachael, Mike, and myself were just six or seven weeks into our freshman year of high school. How the three of us ended up hanging out that day at my house, I do not recall. We were better friends the previous couple years, and this was probably the last time the three of us ever hung out together. We all had friends within our larger friend group we were individually closer with besides each other.

It was a Saturday night, October 2000. We were looking at the TV guide from the local newspaper and for some reason, there was a title that we all gravitated to, something that we had never seen before, caught our attention and we collectively decided to watch. A movie on cable called "Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th."

If you have never heard of this movie, it is the less commonly known gem of what's called a "twin movie." A twin movie is when two movies from different studios come out around the same time with similar looks or plots: Antz/A Bugs Life, Friends with Benefits/No Strings Attached, White House Down/Olympus Has Fallen. You get the general idea. "Shriek I Know What You Did Last Friday The 13th's" twin movie was "Scary Movie." "Scary Movie" had greater commercial success, sequels, and was much better known, but "Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday The 13th" held a special place in our hearts from that night on.

We started watching this movie with no expectations or knowledge of what it would be. The three of us are immediately laughing our heads off at this horror parody.

The high school is being terrorized by a serial killer, as horror movies often are. The five teenage protagonists flash back to before school started where they are driving and hit a deer with a car. Not just a deer, a plastic lawn ornament deer; this movie had no budget whatsoever.

The movie goes on and more people fall victim to the killer, including 'The Administrator Formerly Known As Principal.' We're in Minnesota, a joke to Prince like that is appreciated and loved. Side-inside joke: The Administrator Formerly Known As Principal is played by Coolio, and has a scene where he suggests he and a CPR doll drink "Mar-ga-ri-tas" and says it in a high-pitched voice. I still can't say "Margaritas" without saying it like he does in that scene.

The movie is getting towards the end and due to the sheer ridiculousness, we have no idea who the killer is in the movie. Two of the main teenagers, Dawson and Martina, un-mask the killer, and it's...the identical twin cousin of the cop Doughy played by Tom Arnold. While the movie is still funny, Rachael, Mike, and myself are bitterly disappointed that the killer was not an anthropomorphic, plastic lawn ornament deer.

For years following this movie, even after we drifted apart as close friends, we would still look at each other in the hallways and say, "It should have been the deer!" After high school, we would occasionally message each other on Facebook, or take pictures with a picture of deer, or a stuffed deer, or the DVD with that great line we loved so much: It should have been the deer!

While Rachael hasn't spoken to me in years, and Mike is pretty hard to get a hold of, this is one of my favorite memories of high school. An it's a memory with them. It's still one of my favorite movies. And it still should have been the deer as the killer!

For a novel inspired by my teenage years, in eight parts- Bette On It: Weird Adolescence.

For another autobiographical piece: The Lemon Dress