Reasons I will always be my fourteen-year-old self

In no particular order are a few of the reasons I will always be deep down, me at 14.

Hanson
Since 1997 (ok so I was 12 then, but still) I have been a HUGE fan of the band Hanson. Yes, MMMBop Hanson. Done laughing? I'll give you a minute... Ok, I can take the teasing, but I want to know why no one (besides Jeremy) every asked me why I really like them.
When I first heard Middle of Nowhere (hanson's first major label record) I was just about to start eighth grade. I didn't have a lot of friends and I was really self conscious. I was visiting my family in Oklahoma and my cousin Amber was really in to them and her being a cheerleader, thin and pretty made me want to like them too because then i could be pretty and thin and popular. (it made sense in my 12 year old mind) So over the summer, I spent a lot of time with Amber and a lot of time listening to Middle of Nowhere and watching MTV waiting on hanson videos to come on so we could squeal in excitement and hit record on the VCR. Amber didn't eat much, so I didn't either, we spent a lot of time at the municipal pool in Shawnee, OK (yea they did find a homeless guy floating dead in it one time...i think that was there), jumping on Am's trampoline and hanging out with people she was friends with. I felt amazing all summer, i think Amber and I volunteered at the YMCA day camp as junior counselors and i'm pretty sure i had a crush on one of the guys that was a counselor in training with me. The kids loved me and always wanted to sit with me because i was the nice counselor. Lost track..Hanson. When I got back home to Tennessee, I had lost a little weight, my mom got me contacts and one of the few friends i did have there was also obsessed with hanson and so that helped me be more confident (I didn't care what people thought about my obsession, I think that's the only thing I've never been ashamed of) So, see, hanson helped me be okay with myself, I may not always be 100% happy with myself, but I'm alright.

Crafts!
As most of you know I'm crafty. No, not Beastie Boys crafty, the regular crafty. I love to make things. I like to bake, sew, color (yeah i'm a little kid), crochet (yeah i'm an old lady), make cards, paint, use glitter, you know, crafty. My Grandma on my mom's side got me an art set for christmas almost every year when i was little and i wore those oil pastels out. I got one with chalk one year and thought i was going to crap my pants."Chalk can be used for real art? Fuck YEAH!" -not a direct quote, but my interpretation of the feeling- I wish I had those now and could actually put them to use. I could have been an artistic genius, you know. When I was about 3 (i don't remember it but my grandma has told me this story a few times) I painted a picture with orange, red and yellow on the page, no real shapes just the colors. My grandma asked me what it was a picture of and i told her "It's Bambi's forest fire."
Goddammit!

BAND
Three words: I. LOVE. BAND. Not A band, not THE Band, I'm talking about goofy uniforms, ass-crack of dawn practice, marching-ass fools BAND. Not a lot of people can say they had a fun high school experience, but I loved high school. I basically remember it as band for 4 years with some classes thrown in. My best friends were always in band (of course since that's the only people i ever saw) and I had so much fun. Yeah the 6:30am practices sucked, but it's the closest I ever came to being on a team. I felt like I was part of something and it never occurred to me that people weren't watching the half-time show. We got to go on some pretty bad-ass trips, too. My freshman year we went to Toronto Canada. I saw Phantom of the Opera at the Pantages Theatre, I got to see Niagara Falls, and I found out they call the bathroom the water closet. I went on my first and only drop-type roller coaster, you know the one like the Superman ride at six flags a girl lost her foot on. It was an 800 foot drop and as I was standing in line for it I noticed it was staying at the top way too long at one point and nearly had a panic attack thinking about getting stuck up there. My sophomore year I got to got to Denver, I remember mostly the water in the shower made my hair feel like silk, we went on a train ride through the mountains, and at lot of people got detention when we got back for stealing blankets from the hotel. My junior and senior years we went to California (LA and San Diego respectively) Both of those trips smush together. Anyway, Band also got me in to every football game so that was a plus. If I hadn't been in band, my high school years would have totally sucked, but besides a social club, band also introduced me to some amazing music.I had dreamed of having the second movement from Dvorak's New World Symphony in my wedding since the first time i heard it my sophomore year of high school.(I was 14 then) It has has since become my favorite song of all time and has been played at two very significant events in my life. As any of you that are reading this know, it was played at my wedding to my amazing husband, Jeremy, as I was walking up the aisle with my dad. That was the second major event. The first was during my sophomore year and a boy that was a freshman and played french horn died after being in a wreck on his dirt bike. His parents asked the band to play that song at his funeral and being who I am, of course I went. It was the first and only funeral I've attended. Most of the kids (including me) in band who didn't know Scott didn't cry the whole time during the eulogy and what not, but when we got up to play emotion took over all of us. I have always wondered what it sounded like to the other people at the funeral, if there were obvious breaks in the music from people having to stop playing to sob for a second or if we were able to time them so that it sounded normal.

Cartoons/kid's movies
I will always love cartoons. I'll watch the same cartoon movie 3 times in a week. I know it's not as bad as a small child but it's pretty bad for a 24-year-old, there's just something so calming and reassuring about a kid's movie. I have this theory that the reason I watch the same feel-good, fluffy kind of movies is because I crave stability. My parents divorced when I was 4 so I was old enough to remember what it was like having both parents in the house, but not old enough to think it was my fault. Within just a few years a lot changed, my dad moved in to an apartment and dated a few women, my mom had a few boyfriends (i found out later one was married but she didn't know- oops!) my big sister left for college, my dad remarried and my brother moved in with him, then I was seven. We (mom and me) always had a good collection of the Disney movies on tape. I know we didn't have everything, but we had a respectable repertoire. Being a latch-key kid and basically an only child, i didn't have much to do in the afternoons waiting on mom to get home so i watched Disney movies. I learned every line and every song to almost every movie. They were my friends and they never changed, I always knew what was going to happen and i didn't have to worry about something bad happening. So kid's movies make me feel happy, help me not worry for a 90 minutes or so.

Stairway to Heaven
I first heard Stairway to Heaven before I was 14, even pre-hanson, but it was about 14 that i started listening to it again. There was something so strange, foreign to me in that song. I had never heard anything like it before and I didn't even listen to any other Led Zeppelin songs at the time. That song opened up my musical mind and got me listening to 70's rock. DISCLAIMER: No, I do not know what year that song came out, but in my head, it was from the 70's so i looked for stuff from the 70's. I find something SO sexy about classic rock. I don't know if it's the loud guitars or the weird effects they used on things, but my ultimate fantasy is set in a candle-lit basement and soundtracked by Houses of the Holy and IV.

That's all I got for now. As I was re-reading this, I realized not all of these fit neatly in to the "why i'm 14" category, but it makes sense to me. I've only touched the tip of these huge-ass psychological icebergs but I'll try to leave it be for the time being.