Wednesday Wishes - BSB style

(yes, another BSB post... but from the comments I take many of you love them like I do!)

I love the Backstreet Boys and I’m not ashamed to say it.

I went to a movie in the summer of 1998 with a friend and a song was playing in the theater she told me who it belonged to and that was it. My dad took me to 3 different stores that same day to find the CD. I went to my sisters’ house for a couple of weeks that summer. Coincidently they were doing a show in a nearby city and my brother-in-law offered to take me and see if we could get tickets.  Someone was selling lawn seats for $19 each. Score.

I’ve lost count of how many concerts I’ve been to. I know I went 4 times in one tour, so I’m guessing I’ve seen them in concert at least 10 times, the most recent back in 2013.  Some of you around my age will remember the MTV show FANatic. My best friend from high school and I submitted a video way back when. We became friends with the local DJ (who ended up joining the band for a 100 hour trip around the world many years ago) and slept outside the Jay Leno show to see them.

I was an avid fan throughout my high school years, then, around the time I went to college they sort of slowed down. Kevin left the group and the other guys released a couple of albums without him which I thought were okay, with some good songs, but mostly I wasn’t impressed. I did go to their shows – and had alcohol as I was over 21 by that time.

I never stopped liking them, but life changed and so my music listening habits changed. Other than listening to them I don’t generally listen to anyone. Talk radio is the setting in my car.

Then they came back in a big way with their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a free show relatively close to me (which Thomas took me to along with Nikki) and then their tour (which I went to with Nikki) – it all came rushing back. Their latest CD, In A World Like This, is amazing. It’s the first one they produced themselves and they wrote or co-wrote many of the songs on the album. It made a difference. They sound great and it makes me feel like I did when I was a teen.

Somewhere in between something great happened. My eldest niece, Mika, started being a fan. She became obsessed with them like I was at her age (I was about a year or two older actually). I didn’t even instigate it (although my sister does blame me). I think it’s great, though, because now I can share this with her. When I visited her in January we spent the entire weekend watching their videos on YouTube (something that wasn’t as readily available back in my day). Her dad took me to my first BSB concert and took her to her first last year. And now we get to text each other about our loves.

The guys released a documentary about their rise to fame as well as their private lives growing up in January and Mika went to see it that night with her dad. I got to see it later on in the weekend – I took Nikki since Thomas would not go with me (how rude!). The documentary was great. Not only was it enjoyable to watch the movie and see their lives, but it was great to see it among other women who still love the guys as much as I do.

I can’t wait for the next 20 years of their careers!

My 9/11 Memory

I’m deviating from both Blog-Tember activities because I wanted to take today to remember the happenings of September 11^th 2001. I’m pretty sure I wrote about this in previous blogs, but I wanted to document it on this one as well.

On 9/11/01 I had just started my senior year in high school and I was couple of weeks short of turning 17. My mom would always come wake me up at 6am because I had to get to the bus stop by 6:40 (I was quick at getting ready!). This particular morning she came in a few minutes before 6am. I grumbled as I looked at the clock, it wasn’t time to get up yet. Then she told me:

“Un avion choco a un edificio en Nueva York”.  You can imagine what that means.

I got up to get to my computer and turned on the TV. As I was bringing up my e-mail, I looked toward the TV and saw the 2^nd plane fly into the tower. In my sleepy state I still didn’t quite comprehend what was going on until that moment. I think that at that point I rushed to get dressed and ran downstairs to continue watching the news. My mom wouldn’t let me stay home, but I grabbed my walk-man (remember those?) and continued to listen on the radio.

When my (school) bus arrived my driver greeted me with a smile and I knew she hadn’t heard. I usually sat in the back of the bus except the days that either she or I were particularly talkative. I immediately took the very front seat and told her what happened. She immediately (with her long acrylic nails – I mean it, they were like an inch long!) turned to a news station on the bus’ radio.

Once at school the talk was about what was happening. The classrooms all had televisions in them but they told us we couldn’t turn them. I went to a school that had 4^th through 12^th graders in it. The administration was afraid of the younger kids seeing what was going on. I was upset because they kept telling us that soon we would be in the “real world” but they wouldn’t let the older kids see what was happening in that “world”. Regardless, they let us listen to our own personal radios to hear what was going on.

Like many, if not most, Americans I was glued to the TV in the hours, days, weeks, and even months that followed. I wanted to see what was going on. I wanted to know all the updates. I wanted to be informed. I didn’t mind that the TV stations played 9/11 programs or the news on a constant loop. I was drawn to it.

As the anniversary neared this year I still was drawn to it and I’ve set my DVR to record as many shows I could find.  

A month or so later my school set up a blood drive with the American Red Cross where I donated blood for the first time. I now, as I mentioned before, help to organized the blood donations at my office 2 to 3 times a year.

Where were you?

Teenage (White) Lies

Hello Him & Me readers, my name is Sarah Christine, and although I normally fill the pages of SarahChristineStyle with my ramblings, I am here today to help Kathy out with a guest post while she is enjoying her honeymoon. Recently Kathy guest posted for me and shared a story from her younger years, so I thought I would share a story from those years of my life as well. I am warning you right now I was a very overly dramatic teenager, I have figured out since then what is and isn't important in life and how to control my emotions a little better. This story is from when I was a sophomore in high school though so I hadn't quite figured those things out yet.

I was dating this guy at the time, let's call him Bob. Now Bob was living up in Canada going to school, hockey prodigy and stuff, anyways it was a long distance relationship, which looking back doesn't make a ton of sense for high schoolers, but whatever not the point.

So one day Bob was coming home from Canada and he told me that he would call me when he got home (his parents lived near me, not in Canada) and that it would probably be around 9pm. Well I was home alone that night and as 9pm came and went I started to get antsy, and antsy teenage Sarah isn't super level headed, especially when she has no one around to set her straight. As the time continued to pass by I found it more and more difficult to keep myself from checking my phone every two seconds. Eventually I started calling and texting my mom because I wasn't sure if it was appropriate to call his parents house at 10pm or not (btw it's not, it never is, it is however appropriate to go to bed and call in the morning).

At some point around 11pm when I had received no phone call and was becoming increasingly emotionally unstable, like I was pretty sure this was how I was going to be dumped, because that is the only logical thing to think. I decided that maybe if I threw my phone at the carpeted floor it would start ringing (so logical!), so that's what I did. I chucked my poor little phone as hard as my skinny little arms would allow straight (well mostly straight) down at the carpeted ground below me. And do you know what that phone did? It didn't just hit the nice carpet beneath my feet like it was supposed to, no it decided to bounce off the carpet (did not know that could happen) and launch itself about 5 yards across the room right into the side of a desk that had no business being in the way of my phone and shatter into a couple of pieces.

At this point I tried my very best to come up with some explanation for why my phone was shattered and I needed to get a new one that didn't involve the phrases "I threw it" or "because he wasn't calling me", which basically meant I had to lie, and between not being very good at lying and having shattered my phone while I was home alone with no real good scapegoat around I'm pretty sure no one believed my story anyways. Oh in case you were wondering, there was a lot of traffic and a back up at the border crossing, and then by the time he got home Bob decided to just call me in the morning because he was tired from the long day and I was probably asleep anyways. 

And there you have it, the story of how I "accidentally" broke my phone. Feel free to judge myteenage self and call her any sort of mean name in the book, I do all the time, what's the point of growing up if you don't get to make fun of your younger self?

I hope you enjoyed reading Sarah Christine's post! Don't forget to visit her blog and comment! Thank's for guest blogging today!