Top Ten Reasons It Sucks to Be Sarah Connor

By Melissa Voelker
It seems like it would be a lot easier coming up with a list of the worst things about being Sarah Connor, as her life ever since meeting Reese and the first terminator hasn’t exactly been a picnic. In reality, it is just as hard weeding out the bad moments as the good, unless you don’t mind mentioning things that are basically the same thing over and over. But I’ve done my best to come up with a valid and not-to0-repetitive list.

10. That hair Sarah sports in the first movie is kind of ridiculous. Sure it was the 80’s, but come on. Even she must have known it was terrible, as when she has her nightmare about being blown away on the playground she is sporting that awful mess on her head.

9. After surviving attacks by two different ultimate killing machines and managing to keep her son alive to be the savior of humanity, it is cancer that kills Sarah. She doesn’t even make it to the robotocalypse.

8. Everyone close to her has a tendency to end up dead – her roommate, her roommate’s boyfriend, her lover from the future, the guy she tries to assassinate but decides to let live but who ends up getting shot and then blown up anyway, etc.

7. Even after being almost killed on multiple occasions by super robot killing machines, everyone thinks she is crazy and delusional. It doesn’t matter how many pieces and parts are left behind by terminated terminators, or how many surveillance videos show that she really has been targeted and attacked multiple times, or how many jackass psychiatrists actually witness acts by these menaces from the future, it can’t possibly be real and she must be nuts.

6. Collecting child support from a baby’s daddy who is a dead soldier from the future isn’t exactly possible. And by the time John manages to meet Reese 45 years later it will be a little too late to collect on it.

5. Her life wasn’t great even before the terminators started showing up. She had a crappy job as a waitress (that one kid stuck food right in her pocket and no one cared), her boyfriend was a jerk who kept standing her up, and her mother was a bit of a nag.

4. John Connor is kind of a mess. He’s an insolent, punk teen who turns into an emotionally stunted, whiny adult. Not that his behavior should reflect badly on Sarah as a mother, but, well, it sort of does. How exactly is he going to save mankind if he can’t take his head out of his butt and stop pouting for even five minutes?

3. She survived all of the attempts on her and her son’s lives, but it made her nuttier than a Snickers bar. Maybe not the delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic kind of crazy everyone believes, but still pretty imbalanced.

2. Her name has become synonymous with death. The first two Sarah Connors who got attacked weren’t even the right ones and they still ended up worm food.

1. Everything she goes through - fighting killer robots, giving birth to mankind’s future leader, being locked up for possibly being nuts – makes her kind of a bitch. Sure she has to be tough, she has alot of stuff riding on her shoulders as John Connor’s mother. But does she have to be so cold with him? Eventually she gives him a hug and tells him she loves him, but only after making him feel bad for coming to rescue her from the looney bin.

Honorable Mention – While she has the makings of an okay drill instructor and mother to a great military leader (or serial killer, it really could have swung either way with John), Sarah Connor doesn’t show herself to be the sharpest laser rifle in the armory. She keeps believing that it is possible to change the future, that by blowing up Cyberdyne or killing the scientists responsible for creating SkyNet, it will be possible to stop Judgement Day from happening. But if that were really true and the future was changed, John Connor would disappear because he never would have had a reason (or the means) to send Kyle or the T-100 back in time in the first place so therefore he would never exist. It was cute to have Kyle tell her “the future is what we make” and all, but it was a load of manure.

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About Melissa: By day a mild-mannered tv station receptionist, by night a fighter of crime and corruption in the dirty streets of Spokane, WA . . . or maybe not so much. More like a hyperactive, anal-retentive daytime receptionist and a melodramatic, hyperactive nighttime fangirl who only wishes she could be a fighter of crime and champion of justice (except that would lead to getting my super costume all dirty and I hate doing laundry.) Though my intent has always been to write bestselling novels and live a life of wealth and luxury, putting my talents for snarkiness and word doodling together while letting my geek flag fly suits me just fine – for now.

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