Young Love

I should preface this by saying I’m too old for this now, and I need to stop staying up way past my bedtime, but I can’t help it.  Maybe it’s something about wandering around, barefoot on linoleum in men’s pajama pants that gets my creative juices flowing.  This is the time of night where I’ll eat six things that don’t go together and really enjoy myself; a bowl of cereal, fritos with salsa, some leftover sweet potatoes.

It sounded good at the time

I don’t know how my mind wanders to these places when I’m sleepy, but I got to thinking about a conversation I had earlier about the crushes I had when I was a kid.  At the tender age of ten, I fell madly in love with an angelic and symmetrically featured Denzel Washington during a screening of The Preacher’s Wife.  At eight, reruns of Back to the Future kept me glued to our television throughout the commercial breaks, ever anxious that I’d miss a glimpse of Michael J. Fox in a cool orange vest.  At six, I adoringly admired Harrison Ford while trying to stay up late on the couch beside my father, who was dutifully indoctrinating me with a love of Indiana Jones, although perhaps not quite the kind of love he’d hoped for.

One could say I was a bit of a precocious child when it came to love, but one would be wrong.

Case in point, when I was four, I was absolutely, positively certain that I was going to marry one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Don’t ask me how.  While not assured about the legality or formality of such a union, at four I figured, “It’ll work itself out.”.  I’m not sure how I got this idea into my four year old head in the first place, but my guess is that it may have had something to do with the fact that you’ve got better odds with four to choose from.  After all, in the end, only one of them could pin down the ever elusive April O’Neil, leaving three for me to choose from.  Well, two if she doesn’t choose Donatello.  Because come on, who freaking likes Donatello?

I think I had a hard time choosing between Raphael and Michelangelo.  Looking back, this makes a lot of sense because even at that point, they represented pretty major facets of my personality.  Raphael of course is cool but crude.  Awesomely sarcastic and slightly agro but only masking a fierce loyalty to the brothers green.  Michaelangelo is a party dude, and who can resist the allure of that?  Leonardo was all right, but he was kind of like the Red Power Ranger.  He just…. leads… for some reason we have yet to understand.  Still, better than Donatello.  Donatello is the Peter Chris of the Ninja Turtles.

I can’t say exactly how this obsession faded.  I never liked barbies or baby dolls and just sifted my way through Hot Wheels, Play-Doh, and unrealistic love interests over time.  What I can say is that since then I’ve moved on to bigger and better things.  Next up, Zach Morris.

Turtle Power!   I mean….