again with the blast from the past...

I don't know what it is about this week but, damn have I been nostalgic. And it's not like on-purpose nostalgia. It's more like, things pop into my head or something comes up and BAM! I'm back 3, maybe 5, or even 10 - 15 years ago.

It happened again today. See that video up there? Michael Penn's "No Myth." Brilliant song. Well, I was listening to Last.fm again today, and all of a sudden it came on. And in an instant, there I was as the Roller Dome skating rink in north Hammond, holding hands with my very first boyfriend--we'll call him M.

Ah, puppy love. I mean, at the time it felt genuine. I was only 14, so in my adolescent mind M was 'The One." I imagined our lives together: house, white picket fence, a dog, and 2.5 strawberry-blonde-headed children. (I have always wanted to be a redhead, so the fact that M had a reddish tint to his coif pretty much sealed the deal for me back then.)

But when "No Myth" came on, for a moment, the memory of M and the Summer of 1995 (Holy cripes...13 years ago? Really? Wow. Hold on, I need to regroup for a minute.)...

...as I was saying, when "No Myth" came on today, it brought back that memory of me and M at the roller rink way back in 1995. This song was playing during a couple's skate when M skated me to a dark corner, and I had my first kiss under a shower of lights from the disco ball.

Of course, I make it sound so poetic now. In reality I had a mouth full of Bazooka bubble gum and I had no idea how to kiss.

Like, at all.
And the place smelled like hot dogs and nachos.

Anyways, M and I spent that entire summer together, making out on my front porch swing, (This was before the city decided to install landing-strip-intensity street lights on my street, making secret make-out sessions on the front porch virtually impossible.), talking on the phone for hours, and celebrating our month-a-versaries. Yes, I got flowers once a month every month for an entire summer.

But all this nostalgia I'm feeling, I guess it's not so much about missing M. I mean, he was sweet, but it's not about missing M at all. I think it's the innocence that I miss. When it was all foreign to me,and my heart (among other things) was experiencing all of these new feelings, and it didn't have any bad relationship experiences to reference yet. That naiveté is priceless, and when we are going through it, we don't notice it. And really, that's kind of sad.

I wish I could have found a way to bottle that precious innocence up and could have saved some of it, so that I could daub some on like fine perfume every now and again. Just let it wash over me like those orbs of white light from the Roller Dome's mirror ball back in 1995, all sparkly and new.