If you're like me, then you probably spent most of your life prior to 1999 racing wagons down the hill of a busy street, only to be actually pulled over by a police officer and tremble in fear as you wondered how fast you were really going. You were also probably re-enacting The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with your little sisters, and when the whole wield-the-chainsaw-over-your-head-to-look-scary bit got old, you chased them around the fence line with a metal bat screaming, "I'm gonna kill you!" because you wanted to try something new. Little girls tend to be dramatic, and this was an era of childhood without cell phones and Wii.
All hail the dream team. Among the many re-enactments we would stage hourly, my sisters and I enjoyed putting on concerts for the public. No, we didn't charge anyone for a ticket because we really couldn't play instruments, but we did manage to draw small crowds, namely our grandmother as we performed poolside, singing and dancing and modeling towels to Madonna's The Immaculate Collection. Now and then our brother would join us on our tours, the most memorable being at Sears as he belted out his best Frankie Lymon impression by the women's dressing room, my sisters and I crooning along and our mother taking much too long to try on pants.
We could find an audience anywhere: living rooms, playgrounds, the backseats of station wagons, and we came cheap. We wouldn't swindle promoters out of a few measly dollars. We were artists! We wanted to perform! Price was nothing when it came down to expressing the soul, and we knew that in time the money would roll in and we'd be playing the real venues like the Glenwood Amphitheatre and the State Fair and we'd have real microphones and personal assistants and groupies.
It wasn't enough anymore to be performers, we now had to be performers' girlfriends. Then came boy bands. Yeah, they've always been around: The Beatles, Jackson 5, Mötley Crüe. But when 1999 hit, they were everywhere and we girls couldn't get enough. Suddenly, my sisters and I dropped all the ambition we had for our mega stardom and concentrated instead on arguing over who was sexier: Nick Carter or Justin Timberlake. We watched their Disney concert specials over and over, imagining the lyrics they sang were just for us. We bought their CDs and posters. We joined their fan clubs. (A quick aside: If you are reading this and you happen to be the president of Hanson's fan club, or you are a Hanson brother, could you please send my sister her t-shirt that she ordered over a decade ago so she'll shut up about it. Thank you.)
It wasn't enough anymore to be performers, we now had to be performers' girlfriends. Looking through their CD booklets and cutting out magazine articles was like reading their autobiographies: five best friends from Christian homes, ordinary guys who liked to play basketball and lived in exotic places like Florida, all brought together by five-part harmony and choreographed dance moves. They couldn't thank God enough, and neither could we.
I would have given anything to be Brian Littrell's, JC Chasez's, Will Smith's, or Enrique Iglesias' girlfriend. (Okay, so I know the last two were not in boy bands, but everyone has a sexy black man and a hot Latino crushes when they are 12.) I practiced french kissing their glossy 8×10 faces, an act I'm sure every member of every boy band knows is going to happen when the photographer says, "Smile!"
Ordinary boys at school weren't remotely interesting anymore. Sure, one of them may look like he got jipped when O-Town was finally created, but can he sing? Can he dance? Does he have everyday hobbies, but still find time to visit cancer babies and thank Jesus? Fellas, you may think you are the bee's knees, but if you don't have a growing army of tween girls sworn by love and obsession to follow you and protect you and send you locks of their hair until your dying day, then you might as well be Corey Feldman. Now and then a boy at school may have caught my eye, but I didn't spend long hours writing him love letters in coordinating metallic ink colors that I knew only a real artist would appreciate.
We continued our obsession for a few more years, my sisters and I. We would watch their concerts and imagine boy band sweat whipping across our faces like we were actually there. We'd talk about these guys like they were our boyfriends. But we can't live in 1999 forever, and boy bands have to break up—it's in their contracts. Sure, we cried and we damned the Lord's name and we begged for death to take us away from all the misery that was now our world. But, we understood. Like the good girlfriends we were, we knew our boys had become men and could only wear so much rhinestone and sing along to dubbed tracks for so long before they needed to sever ties, cut their hair, and put out solo albums about their real ex-girlfriends. Yes, we'd watch interviews and read about their justifications for their actions, and we'd buy their new albums, even like a few songs, but we couldn't forget the way we were.
My sisters moved on to other boy bands and, eventually, rap artists. Allie, the youngest, talks about Weezy like she visits him in prison weekly. I moved onto the past, namely classic rock, as I spent most of my college years enthralled with Zeppelin and CCR. I thought my boy band days were behind me, but I was wrong and I blame Goodwill.
Like my grandfather and 8-track tapes, I can't stop buying CDs. Everyone downloads, and I still buy CDs, and I buy a lot of them at Goodwill. Where else can you find Paula Abdul and Milli Vanilli? On my last excursion a few weeks back, I came across NSync's first album and immediately bee-lined for the register like I'd just realized the entire place was going to blow and I certainly wasn't sticking around for that mess.
The album hasn't left my car; I've been listening to it on the way to and from work every day. I've had to take a detour that leads me through a neighborhood where people collect shopping carts as lawn art and police officers have long conversations with drunk bums at abandoned gas pumps. I usually have to wait at a light that sits next to my favorite grocery store sign: Chubb Foods – Quality Meat, Discount Liquor. At this point in my commute, I've made it to track three, "Here We Go," a pop dance song that is all about introductions and vague references to partying. And, of course, I know every word and accompanying dance move as I bob and weave in my seat, the volume loud and the windows down. All I can do is keep time as many people stare at the wonderful, entertaining performer before them, and I won't even charge them a ticket.