Wait? What is that I hear?
Honey...I'll Be Missing You... Mo Money Mo Problems... MmmBop...Quit Playing Games With My Heart...
No wait, it's:
"I will never find another lover more precious than you, more precious than you... Girl you are close to me you're like my brother, close to me, you're like my sister... You are the only one my everything and for you this song I sing... ALL MY LIFE I've prayed for someone like you..."
Top 40 from my 7th grade year? Umm, yes please. In fact right this very moment I have a strange urge to make a new play-list entitled "Wide Legs and Roller Rinks"... then I will jam out to it as loud as possible while hosting a dance party in my living room.
Get. Excited!
This past week I chaperoned a dance and boy did it send me back about 14 years.
... I wore the widest leg pants you could imagine. I would spend Wednesday, Friday, & Saturday evenings at the skating rink, eating cheese sticks, drinking cokes with slush-puppy ice, playing shoot the duck, and hoping that Bobby Luna would pick me for a dance around the circle during snowball.
We would walk the mall every Saturday; ten bucks in hand ready and excited to buy the latest accessories from Claire's and hoping that we would see this week's crush at the Tilt (our malls arcade).
Oh and let me not forget the moment that changed my life. It was dark, the smell of popcorn was in the air, and in the warmth of a packed theater I sat there staring at the dreamiest guy I had ever seen. It was then that my heart stopped and a single tear graced my cheek. He was looking with great desperation into the eyes of a soaking wet red-head saying, "I'll never let go Rose, I'll never let go".
I would have sleepovers, makeovers, school dances, and tears about boys to boot. I walked to school, passed notes, stood in the lunch-line, and made friendships I never thought would end. I also laughed so hard I thought my stomach would fall out, I liked a boy so much it hurt, and had the best friend a girl could ask for.
I had my first ever 1 inch wide highlights, I had braces on my teeth, and I wore shoes with 4inch soles. Going to the movie cost $7 and that would cover my movie, drink, popcorn AND Junior Mints. I would bring 25 cents with me to use the payphone at the mall to call my mom to pick me up.
These were the days.
Perhaps though the memory that outshines any other is from a single moment in my 7th grade math class. On this particular day I had brought a sticker booklet to school, filled with shapes, hearts, smiley faces, and pretty silver stars. It was the week before school got out. I sat in the front row, the desk closet to the door. Behind me sat the boy I had liked every day of that year. Somewhere in the midst of me pulling off one of those yellow smiley face stickers the boy behind me asked to see my booklet. I am sure that my cheeks reddened as I passed it backwards. He spent a few moments looking through it's pages and then asked me to close my eyes, turn around and give him my hand. I could have died happy at that second but I was spared, for what came next was one of the sweetest and simplest moments of my life to date.
My eyes were closed, his one hand holding mine and his other placing a sticker right in the middle of the top of my hand. He said, "Ok open your eyes", but I wanted to savor the moment even if but a second longer. So with my eyes closed I rotated back forward facing the door. I took a breath, opened my eyes, and looked down at my hand. There it was ... not a smiley face or one of the silvery sparkle stars, it was much better. The boy I had liked for 9 months had just given me the only pink heart sticker that the book had.
After that we then held hands, spent together many dances (leaving room for Jesus of course), and savored the sweetness that was Junior High as boyfriend and girlfriend - we would be together forever... well maybe only for two weeks, but as a 13 year old, those two weeks felt like a thousand years.
It might seem silly but in 7th grade it meant the world to me, and last Friday night as I heard the music playing and watched the students sway back and forth I was reminded of what it felt like to be in that place many years ago. What sweet memories.
Ah, 7th grade. I guess the only thing I have left to say is that "my heart did go on"... even through all the tears, the laughter, best friends, skating rinks, wide leg jeans, and that unforgettable, cute boy in my math class.
