Isn’t it funny how hearing a song can bring back memories? Just recently, I was listening to a song (by the Goo Goo Dolls, for pete’s sake) and one line jumped out at me. My stomach flip-flopped, and I remembered that someone no longer in my life said the same words to me: Take what you need. Afterwards, I could only laugh at my visceral reaction to the song.

Anyway. My point is that today I heard a God-awful, sappy song and it instantly took me back nearly 20 years. Remember “Somewhere Out There” by James Ingram and Linda Ronstadt? Of course I was reminded of a boy. His name was Jason, just like every third boy back then. Our last names were close alphabetically, and we were in the same homeroom in seventh grade. We also had science together that year and maybe a few other classes. He was sooo cute and he liked me, too. He’d take my books, my pencils, all that annoying shit that 12 and 13 year old boys do.

I wasn’t the type of girl that “went” with boys, most likely because I didn’t get asked. But Jason and I talked all the time and, from what I remember, our science teacher separated our seats more than once, but we’d just talk across the room.

Once we got to high school, he started smoking and hanging out with the “burnouts,” as we called them back then, while I was off doing newspaper and debate-related things. I don’t remember ever really seeing him. My neighbor was a year younger and also ran with the burnouts. He came over one day after school, dying to tell me that Jason had asked about me. My neighbor was baffled, wondering how Jason and I knew each other, as I was totally a goody two shoes. My neighbor, under the guise of being helpful — but he was in the middle of one of his crushes on me, as we both kinda liked each other for years — told Jason, “Monique would never be interested in a guy like you!”

Alas. I’d like to say the neighbor wasn’t right, but he was. I was 15 or 16, I was snobby and too concerned with what everyone else thought.

But back to the song. At first I couldn’t remember why that horrid song reminded me so strongly of Jason. Then I remembered that we danced together to that song at a 7th grade dance. He was tall. It was nice. I’m sure I was terribly giddy and embarrassed. It’s nice to have a memory of an adolescent crush that is still sweet and fresh.

∗ Posted by Monique on 09.30.2006
∗ Crushes, Music, The past