As I sit in my apartment streaming the documentary, “Brat,” by Andrew McCarthy, I think this setup is all wrong. I should be watching this on a VHS tape, with my own Brat Pack in tow, not streaming it from a remote-controlled environment alone. That’s because if you grew up in the ‘80s, this group, their coming of age in cinema, is likely an inextricable part of your zeitgeist. It is only now that I, like the narrator himself, question whether it should have been.

As a memoirist, I often write about nostalgia, the careful dance of looking back on your life and trying to document it without an inherent bias. It’s hard not to look back at your transgressions without a self-imposed Fred Savage narration of wisdom, like in “The Wonder Years,” because you have naturally gained insight decades later. It looks like Andrew McCarthy might have less distance. I hope this film helps him get his closure.

I still remember seeing “Pretty in Pink” at The Kingsway Theater in Brooklyn — the infectious music. It was mesmerizing to watch others who reflected my fears. But as an urban girl, I never truly related to John Hughes’ depictions of teenagers, and I never wanted to be any of them. They simply did not reflect my culture, my beat.

City kids don’t grow up in huge houses. The dichotomy of wealth was rarely apparent because we all took the same public transportation, went to the same public schools, and, due to crack and crime, we would never wear flashy jewelry. The guys wearing blazers probably got jumped on the train or had their sneakers dangling from light posts. Furthermore, the crushes in my life were street-smart, grittier boys who probably never had a car, lived in a house, or had monosyllabic names. They had more color to them.

That being said, I believe there was this moment of joy watching films where parents were in the background, and kids drove the narrative. They were the ground zero of collective teenage stardom, even if they were in their twenties. But we, the latchkey kids of that era, already thrived in a world without parental supervision. We knew how to navigate our lives without them.

Urban children didn’t need rides or cars, but a single token could take us anywhere we wanted to go. We could go to a friend’s house and watch any of the Brat Pack movies on our VCRs or go to the movies and smoke cigarettes in the theater if we wanted to.

We could date people in any class or of any color, and somehow, it would be accepted, even if it took a little time. Our lives and our experiences were never mirrored on the screen.

I had never been a part of the “Friends” frenzy, but I did enjoy “My So-Called Life.” Even though the former was set in New York, and the latter was in a Pittsburgh suburb, the range of characters and their backgrounds resonated with my so-called life. The crush has an Italian last name that ends in a vowel. Her friends had depth and different ethnic backgrounds, and her loving family was shown in honest conflict, which was still relatable while far from my own. There was nothing bratty about these rising stars.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved watching movies from the ‘80s. I loved rooting for the underdog and watching them get what they wanted. And I get what it is like to have an unwanted nickname or label that is hard to shake. That is what growing up is all about. In this case, the culprits in this slander were all in their 20s, meaning their amygdala should have developed slightly more by then.

But in the end, this ‘80s teen watched some great movies, developed some interesting crushes, and made my way in the world. After all, how many inspirational female characters were there in movies at the time? John Hughes had yet to create them. We had to do that all ourselves.

Elana Rabinowitz (elana.rabinowitz@gmail.com) is a writer and teacher in Brooklyn, New York.