All my life

It's so strange how something so simple as hearing a few bars of a song can take you straight back into a moment – regardless of where you might be in the present.

Nevermind how you're feeling, or what you're thinking, or even doing.

The ears hear it, and bam! The mind sees it, smells it, touches it....you're there.

I found myself smack in one of those audible timewarps this past weekend. Lee had made a few "mixtape" cds for us to listen to on our trip to Portland with the children. The songs varied, between silly and sentimental and then bam:

"Baby, babay, baby, baby,

baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby,

baby, baby, oooh..."

Even though I sit, cozily, in the comfort of my own vehicle (passenger seat...random – just had a Death Cab moment typing that), fully aware of the elaborate lip-synch scenario playing out beside me and the murmur of the children's enjoyment from the back seat, I'm not there.

No, I'm in ninth grade again.

It gets worse.

I'm at a high school dance.

I'm there with some friends from drama (Surprised? You shouldn't be.) and it's nothing like prom or winter formal. Pretty sure it wasn't even an important dance like tolo or homecoming. Actually, I'm fairly certain it was one of those conditional Prosser-Mustangs-win-another-football-game type dance.

Laughing to myself about people remembering those as glory days right now.

Anyway, I was a horrible friend.

I was at that dance with a handful of friends, but most importantly, I was there with a guy who I had somewhat convinced to break up with one of my girlfriends. And he did it.

He was a great guy. Super smart. Tall. And he was a great boyfriend. I remember thinking that about him a lot. He was such a great boyfriend to my friend...why was he so into her? She was cool and all. But for the life of me, I didn't understand why he was so sprung on her.

It's worth noting that I didn't particularly want a boyfriend, so I'm not sure what I was even doing.

That song came on and he asked me to dance. Being a typical homie, I didn't want to be weird about not wanting to dance with him, because hello...spectacle, so I went with it.

I've bullied myself into doing things I would normally scream like a super high pitched scream about and run far, far away from, preferably to a place where I can lock the door and lie down on a couch and maybe there's also a pillow and blanket there and a book or a tv.

Growing up tomboy, whoa I should write a book.

Anyway, so he asks me to dance and the internal monologues goes like this:

"Ugh, dancing is sissy stuff, I thought you were here to make fun of people."

"Oh God, if you say no, he's going to be all weird about it. Then he's going to think either you think something's wrong with him or that you really like him and being super excited about dancing with him will be a DEAD GIVE AWAY."

"Maybe you should fake cramps and politely excuse yourself to go home."

"OH JUST DO IT YOU WUSS, IT'S JUST ONE SONG. YOU'RE NOT GOING TO DIE."

So I say, "Totally," but in a super NONCHALANT way.

And then the "babys" start, as in K Ci & Jojo, as in "All My Life" begins to play.

I'm so lost in my internal turmoil that I have no memory of any small talk or maybe there wasn't any.

All I know is by the second chorus of "All my life," he started to get really into the song. We had been standing/swaying, me corpse-stiff, about arms length apart, my hands on his shoulders, his hands on my waist.

But by that second chorus, he started trying to close the gap.

His once gentle handling of my sides began to turn into what I would later discover people call a massage. Feeling his fingers dig into my sides, in time with the music (mind you, with plenty of room for Jesus betwixt the two of us) made my STOMACH TURN.

And by turn I mean, jump up into my throat. Make me simultaneously sweaty and cold. Make all the brain things stop. Make me realize, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING?

You turned all that great boyfriend stuff toward yourself, you idiot.

Added to my inner turmoil was the fact that K Ci & Jojo had to throw in the bit about "pray that you do love me too" or something or other and I lost it. God couldn't be a part of this, this was weird!!

"I CAN'T. DO. THIS." I say, drop my arms and make a beeline for the girl's bathroom.

So much for nonchalant.

Lee looks at me, "What's wrong?"

"Oh nothing, this song just brings up a horrible memory."

"Oh," he says, and skips the track, starts singing the next song.

I smile to myself that the memory of getting totally freaked out that a guy essentially gave my waist the equivalent of a shoulder rub can still give me a stomachache.

I looked at the lyrics of that song today and realized I'm growing up, since it seems easier to me now to be excited that Lee would pick that song out and put it on a cd for me, than to be grossed out by a 60-sec incident that happened 16 years ago.