New Kids on My Block??

Let me just say that it's been a long, wonderful, emotional, and exhausting week. I slept for 2 hours last night because rather than getting the rest I so desperately needed, I was re-opening old wounds and going in reverse down the road to healing I have already gone down at least several times before. Congratulations, Kristin, you've actually managed to stare peace and closure in the face and choose the path to unrest and worry. Is it possible to get dumber as we get older? I am always hearing everyone talk about getting older and wiser! Shit - I must have missed that bus...must have happened about the same time I missed the "don't get married when you're 23" and the "if he tells you he's been waiting for you his whole life after one day, run" bus. But I digress. My somewhat questionable decision-making as of late is not up for scrutiny tonight...I'm much too exhausted and fragile for that...

So I fell asleep early tonight while catching up on recent episodes of my favorite show, The Office, on my computer. I woke up to the familiar buzz of my cell phone, freaking out that I had overslept, and unsure exactly where I was. Before you criticize or make fun, I think we have all had those moments! Anyways, it was my girlfriend calling to tell me that she had just finished watching the New Kids on The Today Show this morning. While being interviewed, they said they were just a group of guys from Jamaica Plains in Boston. EXCUSE ME!?! Back that wicked accent up just one second...JP!?! So, basically, what this boils down to is this. I live in the same neighborhood where the New Kids grew up. Maybe on the same street. Maybe I take the same T they did. Maybe I shop at the same store. Maybe I've passed their mothers on the street. This is too much for me to wrap my head around right now. This is huge.

I will say this, though. I remember being like 12 years old, praying that I would give anything to meet Joey McIntyre. And, if I did, I promised that I would make him fall in love with me - and would never ask for anything else ever again. (Let me pause here to say that I'm glad God has been around the block enough to see this one coming and not hold us to this promise - every teenage girl would have run out of prayers before she even hits puberty). I know all of you are reading this thinking I'm crazy. But you all know you thought it too - don't you judge me! :) So I am slightly worried that God (or whatever/whoever you may believe in) was on a slight time delay back then, and is just now getting around to making that dream come true. That, yes, I may actually get to meet or run into one of the boys. After all, maybe they lived in my apartment. Or next door. Maybe they did their laundry at the same laundromat. Regardless, and I don't want to seem ungrateful here or anything, but they're like 40 now, and are married with children. And they can't really sing as well as they used to. Or, at least sing the same songs as well as they used to. I still love them, don't get me wrong. It's just that I wish I would have known that my life and dreams would have come full circle. That the dreams I dreamed when I was 12 would possibly come true when I was 28. I may have edited them. Maybe I would have tried to plan things out a little more. I was too young - I didn't quite imagine Joey as almost 40. At 12 that probably would have creeped me out a little. A lot, actually.

My point here is this. Pick your dreams carefully. God's busy and is probably back-logged. It might take 16 years for Him to get to your request. You wanna make sure before you go and make any silly promises to the guy upstairs that when you're dream comes true, it's not the sad reality I'm facing: the possibility of running into Joey McIntyre at the local Stop and Shop while he's shopping with his wife and kids. That's just not how it was supposed to be for us.