If you are between the ages of 40 and 55, then you had the good fortune of growing up during the glory years of John Hughes films.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off, which premiered in 1986, was one film in a long string of impressionable classics Hughes directed in the 1980s that served as instant cultural milestones for every young member of Generation X.

Bueller, played by an ever-charming young Matthew Broderick, is the king of his high school. The guy everyone wants to be around. As the school secretary, played by the lovable Edie McClurg, adroitly points out early in the film to the school principal, "Oh he's very popular, Ed. The sportos, motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, dickheads...they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude."

Throughout the film, a consistent characteristic of Bueller is his seeming nonchalantness toward...pretty much everything. Because he gets along with everyone - except for his nemesis, the dastardly school principal Ed Rooney, and his jealous sister, played by a pre-Dirty Dancing Jennifer Grey - he seems to skate through life with ease, his path smoothly paved by his many admirers.

As a young boy watching the film, and even now as a middle age man, I can't help but find myself among the groupies that admire Ferris. His easy-going manner and ability to find the good and the fun in any situation, no matter how dire, is borderline enviable.

This list is dedicated to identifying the many characteristics that make Ferris, Ferris.

That is, the Tao of Ferris Bueller.