The Wonder Years Quotes
Narrator: In nineteen-seventy-two, the "me" decade was dawning. And people everywhere were doing their own thing. Letting it all hang out. And setting out to find themselves. The world was changing. And my family was right in the middle of it.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: The next morning, I watched my sister get married... and welcomed a new brother into my family. I watched my mother send her firstborn child out into the world. And felt her sorrow. I watched my father give away his only girl... to a stranger he hardly knew. I said goodbye, myself. Looking back, maybe it all seems a little silly. But being there, in those passing moments, I saw that something real and important was happening. Not just for Michael and Karen, but for all of us... in our small and fragile, almost-insignificant suburban family. After all, those were passionate times, when children were pioneers... on the road to find out, wherever that road might take them. When brothers and sisters, looking back... wished they'd known each other better. And parents, filled with love and despair, held on to the past... and kept a quiet vigil, for the future.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: When I was growing up, summer vacations meant one thing - fun. Two solid months of goofing off, hanging out, and sleeping late. June, July and August were a time when anything was possible, when the hardships of school were over, and the promise of great times lay ahead. As for me that summer of nineteen-seventy-two, I was sixteen. Still young enough to bask in the pleasures of summer. The real delights... the harbingers of doom. It was grim. Within hours of his graduation, my brother had been Shanghai'd by the American workforce. Not that I wasn't sympathetic. Still, it was about time the Wayner got a taste of the old Puritan work ethic. I mean after all, this was Wayne's problem, not mine. Until of course, it was. Oh, God. Here they came. Those two words which meant death to summer fun.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
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.
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.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
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.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
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 you're 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 your sixteen, the only way to get your love back... is to take it.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: There was a road that ran near the edge of my town. Out where the suburbs were still farms. I used to go there nights, that autumn of nineteen-seventy-two. I was sixteen. I had a girl. I had a car. I had a job. I was full of night... and life. I just wasn't ready to go home. That year, I traveled streets I'd never known before. I pushed against the limits of my suburban life. I had no idea exactly what lay ahead. All I knew was... I was running out of time. And I was gonna bust if something didn't happen... soon. In nineteen-seventy-two, the country was at war. With its armies... with its ideals... with itself. The dreams of the '60's were battling a new decade. And things were happening everywhere. Well, almost everywhere.
Mr. Deeks: Open your books to chapter six, section thirteen. The rise of post-agricultural Europe.
Narrator: Eleventh-grade. The no-man's land of public education.
Mr. Deeks: Open your books to chapter six, section thirteen. The rise of post-agricultural Europe.
Narrator: Eleventh-grade. The no-man's land of public education.
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Narrator: They say men are children, but sometimes children are men; maybe that's where the confusion lies... All I knew was that night the world suddenly seemed very big and I felt very small, so I did what I could...1972 was a crazy time. Kids played football, drove cars, went to school, celebrated life; while soldiers, heroes, their brothers struggled to find their way home from war; and young boys watched and grew wiser in their dreams.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: The hardest part of growing up is having the ones you've always turned to, turn to you.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: We'd come this far. No sense turning back, now. We fished the rest of that day. We didn't catch much. Dad said he'd like to move up here, and open a bait shop. I told him it was a great idea. I think he believed it. And in the end... I guess we finally figured out why we'd come here in the first place. We'd come... to say goodbye.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: It seems to me, a wedding means something different to everyone. To some, it's an occasion for simple pleasures. And for others, a wedding's implications are more profound. For some... it's a time for contemplation. For others, a time for regrets. A chance to measure just how far we've come in life... against the promise of those just starting out.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: It was a testament to romance at its finest and most pure. It was a declaration of virtue. Simple, and gracious, and real. And after a day of infidelities... some proposed and planned, some more subtle... I felt for the first time... that someone believed in something a little different. In love. In commitment. In each other. It almost made me glad to be there. I guess you could say that weddings mean a lot of things to a lot of people. We might cry at the romance unfulfilled in our own lives. And shrink at the unseen compromises our lives have held for us. But weddings also bring out hope. And promise. And possibility. After all, as we choose our partners... some of us make our choices for life. And some of us dance with just one of many. And sometimes - for the lucky ones - we remember why we picked who we did. And after years of fighting over burnt toast...and bounced checks... we might, for a brief moment... look at each other as we once did - before kids, and mortgages and routine conspired against us. And others are content to postpone their choices... knowing somehow, that the future, like that Saturday afternoon, will tempt us with dances - both slow, and fast.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: Junior year was a time of... exploration. A time for expanding horizons, broadening perspectives, seeking answers to little-known questions. It was an opportunity to grapple with the great issues of our day, which as it happened, boiled down to only two. One was sex. Miss Farmer. Our social studies teacher. In one of the great cosmic ironies of our time... the board of education had hired her to mold and develop our formative young minds.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: In a world where everyone was taking advantage of everybody else... sex and economics were facts of life. For all of us. I continued to see Miss Farmer every day, but, somehow, it wasn't the same after that. After all, in a way, she had done me a favor - taught me a lesson in "life". To wit, when it came to beautiful women and money, it would always end like this - some guy would get stuck on a ladder in November... and some guy would end up alone. All I know for sure is, it took me six weeks to finish painting that house. It cost me two-hundred-and-fourteen dollars of my own hard-earned money. And the next spring, Mr. Kaplan put up aluminum siding.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: Every four years, our country is gripped by a case of temporary insanity. We call it... the presidential election. It's democracy defined. A chance for politicians who know better... to make promises they can't keep. And come November... it's a chance for us to believe them.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: I guess many hearts were broken across America that night. But only one I really cared about. But somehow, it didn't seem important, anymore - who was right, who was wrong. All that really seemed to matter was... After all, maybe in his own way, Mike was right. In politics, you live to fight another day. Sure, the 'sixties were gone, but sooner or later...there'd be other battles to fight. The thing is, that election forever changed the way my generation looked at politics. We discovered, no matter how painfully, that we could be part of the process. That we could believe. And even now, twenty years later, despite all the evidence to the contrary... I can remember that night. And still believe.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: They say you can live a lifetime and never find love. So I guess I was lucky. Because true love crossed my path the first time I met the girl next door - Winnie Cooper. Winnie and I'd been together longer than any couple I knew. Still, history only goes so far. Kinda like Winnie. Unfortunately, the mathematics of the situation were open to interpretation. To me, they led forward, to that great unknown. But to Winnie, they led... back! See, the great thing about us was that we had this past together. The bad thing about us was that we had this past together. Not that I minded being part of Winnie's past. It's just, when it came to who I was... she seemed to regard me as a known quantity.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: They say hindsight's twenty-twenty, and I guess it's true. Because as I stood outside Winnie's house that night, I suddenly saw it all so clearly. I'd sold both of us short, by taking something that most people never have and throwing it away for something less. I'd been in such a hurry to impress people that didn't matter, I'd torn apart the only ones who did...us.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: My father worked at NORCOM over half his life. And eventually... he rose to the ranks of middle management. Where every day, was filled with crisis... challenges... and Rol-Aids. Yep... through the years my father had given a lot to NORCOM. And now... he had given them... Wayne. My brother had been employed in the mail-room for about six months. Don't ask me how. And if his work-ethic didn't exactly match Dad's... at least he was trying to find a niche for himself. Make new acquaintances. Bonnie Douglas. She was twenty-three, funny, smart, and, oh yeah - divorced. It was no wonder Wayne felt the way he did. Whatever Dad felt about all of this... he was keeping it to himself. Like all the Arnold men... he had a lot of things on his mind.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: It was that simple. And it was that complex. Love can kill you. It can tear you apart. But if you're very lucky... it can bring you back together. Sometimes love is unexpected... and unpredictable. And sometimes... you just have to go with your heart. And hope for the best.
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Narrator: For most kids I went to high school with, Tuesday and Friday nights meant homework, hanging out, dating - the usual agonies and ecstasies of teenage life. For me, those nights meant something else. My high school job. I was "Kevin Arnold - Chinese food delivery boy". Where you found harried waiters, agile cooks, Peking ducks, and of course... Mr. Chong. After four months on the job, we'd finally learned how to communicate.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: Working for Mr. Chong certainly wasn't the best job I ever had. The hours were long... the money was poor, and employee-management relations left a lot to be desired. But in its way, each night held a promise - of riches. And adventure.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: One thing a kid learns growing up, is that life... is a series of risks. It's a cause-and-effect relationship. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Still, with the proper guidance, we learn to deal with the risks. And pretty soon, we set out into the world... sure in our options, confident of our choices. Until, that is... eleventh-grade. The year of decisions. Around the middle of junior year... the risks increase. Almost overnight, the choices get harder. One guess why. The scholastic aptitude test. The living nightmare of American adolescents. Like some kind of biblical curse... the SAT's had descended on our class... reducing even the most-intelligent among us to a state of... flop-sweats.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: That afternoon, Dad and I took the tour. We talked furniture. We talked life. We made plans. And the next morning, at 8: 00 AM, seventy-eight students gathered in the McKinley cafeteria to take what was supposed to be the most important test of their lives. Everyone had a different way of coping that day. Some were more effective than others. But for all the risks and choices, I was one step ahead of them. After all, I knew that this was just one test in thousands I'd be taking in my life. None of them final, none of them irrevocable. And the way I saw it, maybe life was a risk. But this time, I was ready.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: December, nineteen-seventy-two, was a time of change for my family. A time of strange occurrences. Improbable events. And, a fews surprises. After a twenty-year sabbatical in the kitchen... my mother was graduating from State College. We were all pretty proud of her. As for my father... after a half a lifetime at NORCOM... he decided to invest in the future. Well, the future of furniture, anyway.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: I guess some gifts are simple. They come from the heart... with a lifetime guarantee. And that afternoon... Christmas finally arrived. That Christmas Eve, I delivered egg rolls and pork lomein - for fifty cents more an hour. Then I turned right around and squandered the profits - on cashmere. Still, I think it was worth it. As for that big box, it turned out to be something much, much smaller. [Winnie gives Kevin a present] I hated it. I loathed it. I despised it. Then again, on the other hand... That night we skipped the customary dinner at home. Seemed there was a more fitting place to gather. We stayed up late. We talked about old times, new times. We ate turkey and dressing... and egg rolls. After all, the way I saw it, that year, we had a lot to celebrate.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: Over the years, a family develops a kind of character. A sense of heritage. A feeling of roots. For my family, those roots extended all the way to the back of our garage. It was kind of our Plymouth Rock. The final week of nineteen-seventy-two. Where I lived, it was a time of change. Most particularly in the person of... my new brother. Sure - maybe this looked like the same doofus I'd shared a room with for fifteen years... but in one way, he was different. Wayne was in love. And somehow... our garage was never gonna be the same again. Not that I begrudged the guy his good fortune. After all, he'd found the girl of his dreams. Bonnie Douglas. Twenty-three, divorced, and mother of one. But it wasn't what he'd done that was so perplexing... it was how he was doing it.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: So maybe that New Year's Eve 1972 didn't work out exactly like any of us planned. There was heartbreak we didn't anticipate, and events we couldn't have imagined. Still, it wasn't all bad; there was a magician. So, maybe there was a message in it all. The future was calling us. And no matter what, there was no turning back now.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: Throughout time... there have been some pretty obnoxious couples. Couples who constantly bickered. Couples who had trouble communicating. But never, in the history of men and women... had there been a couple more horrifying, more terrifying, than... Alice Pedermeir... and Chuck Coleman. In the three months they'd been dating... they'd broken up twenty-seven times. A class record. Make that twenty-eight times. And in situations like these, there was one cardinal rule. Never, never, get in the middle of someone else's relationship. It was a tried-and-true theory. Leave well enough alone, and things would work out.
TV Show: The Wonder Years
Narrator: I never did get that car. I got my old one back from "Pistol Pete". But I guess I did learn a few things from this mess. When it comes to couples, mind your own business. When it comes to women, you'll never understand them. And, when it comes to cars... always bring a wrench.
TV Show: The Wonder Years