Takin Me Back to The Year of Dirty Dancing...
Working on this presentation totally reminded me doing science fair projects for school when I was little. Although, how nice would it have been if the internet had been around? It would have made it so easy to just go online and fill in a pre-made template, instead of cutting paper slides and glueing them to poster board and getting high on the glue fumes in the process.
I have to admit I actually kind of liked doing these projects b/c it was creative and usually got me extra credit in class. But most of all, I think I won a ribbon every year that I participated, and it felt good. You know? I know, it's true that me discovering/proving that light and water were necessary for seeds to grow into plants via photosynthesis was about as as (non)monumental as a child discovering some well-known truth that all adults already know, for the first time. (And this really was my 7th grade science fair topic!). In any case, it felt great to my 12 or 13 year old self.
The best prize, though, was the year when our school rewarded all of the science fair winners with a special field-trip to the Baltimore Aquarium. It was a three hour bus ride to Baltimore, and every cool kid brought a Walkman loaded up with the Beastie Boys, I think. And I think I had a mix tape with the Beastie Boys and also my all time favorite, Prince. That was fun. Looking back, it was not really as bad a nightmare as it might seem to a lot of adults (teachers) to turn a bunch of 12 or 13 year olds loose around the Inner Harbor on a spring day. The hormones were raging, for sure, and I was in the midst of my skater boy craze! But, we were all pretty good kids (hell, we were science fair geeks, so of course!). No one got in trouble or did anything that got the chaperones all mad (the movie Dirty Dancing didn't come out 'til later that year), and I think the biggest highlight of the day was getting to rent a paddle boat in the Harbor w/ my classmate Alyce, while we talked about how cute some boy or other was, and we watched some teenage skater boys hanging around the area showing off their fancy skateboard tricks. And, oh boy did I feel sort of faux-grown up, too, because at the end of the day, before leaving the city, a bunch of us went to a nice seafood restaurant in Harborplace, armed with money our parents had given us that morning as we had left for Baltimore. We splurged on Chesapeake/Maryland style crab cakes, etc.
Afterwards, of course, being middle-schoolers, the trip wasn't complete w/o a run to the touristy candy shop in the Inner Harbor. It seemed that everyone bought bags of gummy bears and sour patch kids and jawbreaker candy for the bus ride home. Those were good times. Was it 1987? Does that sound about right? I think it was, and life was pretty simple and straightforward then.
Not that I've really had any spare time to sit around thinking or bloggin about it....but, I do have wonder, why are things with guys always so complicated? *(Note: this is NOT the same as saying men are complicated). They are not. I think guys are simple creatures who do things that baffle women sometimes, and maybe it's just Mars-Venus thing, right? But it leaves me biting my tongue for now...but with a genuine question.
I have a question for you all: "Can men and women ever just be friends?". Put differently: "Do men ever just want to be your friend (if you're female)?".
Seriously! I'm all ears on this one. Anyone???
