In yet another cruel move by the universe to convince fortysomethings that, yes, our youth has indeed said bye-bye, writer/director John Hughes—who made some of the most successful teen comedies of the 1980s—died of a heart attack at age 59 while taking a morning walk.

I gave Hughes’s 1985 hit The Breakfast Club a so-so review in my high school newspaper and I’m still taking crap about it. (Hughes wanted to reward his lonely geeks with popularity by the end of the movie—writing as a lonely geek, I had a real difficult time believing that proper makeup application and a little ribbon was all it took to turn Ally Sheedy into a dream date. And I’m still not sold on that idea.)

Hughes made Molly Ringwald a star in Breakfast and Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles. If you’ve ever seen Ms. Ringwald’s days as a child actor on the first season of The Facts of Life you know this was no small feat.

And 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is a teen classic, through and through (well, except for the soupy stuff about his best friend Cameron’s father loving that damn car more than his own son). Hughes knew what a tiresome farce the average American high school classroom could be. Who hasn’t been trapped in something similar to the economics lecture that Hughes handed to actor Ben Stein on a silver platter? Stein, playing a bored teacher desperate for student participation, continually utters the immortal line, "Anyone? Anyone?" and never gets an answer.

Hughes, at his best, captured the dreams of pop escape that most teens long for. He made outsiders fantastically "in." When Matthew Broderick dies—and, what with things going the way they are, I hope he’s at least checking his cholesterol level—it won’t be his success in Broadway’s The Producers that I’ll remember. It’ll be Matthew Broderick as Ferris Bueller coasting down a Chicago street on a parade float, lip-synching to Wayne Newton’s "Danke Schoen" with liberating abandon.

Danke schoen, Mr. Hughes, danke schoen.