My family has a crawl space storage underneath the house. The summer before the fall when I left for college, my parents reminded me that my brother was in need of my room when I moved out, so I had to not only pack for school, but pack up my entire room. I was OK with that because I was ready to move out and move on. My crap is now in that crawl space under the house. Now that I have myself and my things all in one place, I decided to organize my things yesterday. WOW what a walk down memory lane!!!! T-shirts from girls' camps, knick knacks from grandma throughout the years, books. I found my tassel from when I graduated high school and my senior year yearbook. And ooohhh the pictures. Pictures, pictures, pictures. But one thing that made me laugh out loud was finding my old CDs and one CD in particular.
Let's go back to the seventeen-year-old Michelle. Involved heavily with the music department at Tualatin High School: the pit in a musical, top instrumental ensemble of the school, Encore outside of school, piano competitions, etc etc. In wind ensemble and we were performing a piece where, instead of my usual spot in the front with the flutes, I got to sit at the piano near the trombones in the back. I liked this set-up because I got to flirt with the boy who played stand-up bass, who also sat near the back with the trombones. I thought he was the cutest boy in the band and, therefore, I didn't have a chance. Or so I thought. I found out later that he would move the piano closer to him before class started so that we could talk during rehearsal.
A few months and a band trip later, I was convinced he was in to me, too. But he was moving SOOO SLOWLYYY and I was getting to the point where I was like, ok dude let's do this thing. We had gone out for the first time a few months earlier after we discovered that we both were craving ice cream at the exact moment while we were chatting on MySpace (may it RIP...). Since our ice cream trip, we had established a tradition of watching "The Office" each week.
One week, he turned the TV off at the end of an episode and turned to face me on the couch. That night, I (finally) had my first kiss and left my first boyfriend's house. I was smitten and boyyy did he make me feel soooo good. Nearly every time I saw him, he would call me beautiful or cute. I would sometimes catch him looking at me and he would say something like: "Sorry, I just really like you." I mean, easy on the cheese, nacho man! But I loved it and I loved him.
To top it off,
he was in a band. Seriously, every girl's dream. To this day, I really think he's a great musician--that's my unbiased opinion. I was his little local band "groupie." I went to all of his shows and hung out with the bands afterwards at Shari's. He would introduce me to the other cool musicians as his girlfriend and would not be ashamed to kiss me in front of them. After school, I would go to his house and he would sing to me and we would play guitar hero. His band, Finding Lenny, never took off after high school (or so I think), but they saved up and carved out a record. I still remember the day he showed me the album for the first time and he said, "Read the 'thank yous' section." It reads: "I thank...Mom, Dad, and Rachel for their love and support,
my girlfriend Michelle, our families, Jon Foreman, and Matthew Thiessen." Guys, I beat Jon Foreman and Matthew Thiessen and that's a big deal in our music world!!!
Smitten.
This brings me back to my day in the crawl space. I laughed when I re-discovered my eclectic taste in music, particularly in high school. I also laughed with glee because I found my copy of "Nursery Rhymes for Modern Times," by Finding Lenny. As I re-uploaded the CD (I deleted the CD soon after this relationship ended because my dramatic teenaged self was too torn up to just hear his voice!), I remembered the times at Shari's, the weekends when I would wait until the last possible moment to leave his house before I was too late for curfew, the lunch dates.
You were my teenage dream.
