tales from junior high

Since today’s Song of the Day is from Green Day, I thought I would tell you a little story about how I came to enjoy Green Day.

So you know how I have kind of an obsessive personality? Well this was never more obvious than in junior high. You see, there was this guy named Paul and pretty much, he was beautiful. He was a year older than me and had the bad boy vibe going on, which obviously made him that much more attractive. Because of this, I pretty much stalked him every day during lunch. My little group of friends and I followed him everywhere he went, from one end of the school to the other, although he usually just hung out by the vending machines.

Besides being artistic and having great hair, Paul also liked Green Day. And since no 14 year-old girl’s life is complete without changing herself for every guy she has a crush on, I decided that I needed to like Green Day as well. This was like 1994ish, and the album Dookie had just come out. One of my BFF’s, Dawn, had the tape (yes, children, this was before CD’s), so I would go over to her house all the time and listen to it, fast forwarding to the songs that were on the radio and were cool. (Side note-remember how tedious it was to have to fast forward and rewind tapes?)

I soon decided that just listening to the songs wasn’t enough, since obviously Paul didn’t know I was listening to the tape because I never actually spoke to him. Fortunately, he had a Green Day t-shirt that he wore all the time and, as luck would have it, Dawn had the exact same t-shirt. (I tried to find a picture of said t-shirt, but I can’t because it was just that cool and that special and rare. And it was a really long time ago.) So, of course, I borrowed the shirt from Dawn and started wearing it all the time. And before long, Paul noticed and actually started talking to me, and then not much later, asked me out!

Hahahaha! Actually, no. I continued wearing the shirt and stalking him, and Paul continued ignoring me. And that is how I came to enjoy Green Day.