Memory Lane

My goodness. Skittles posted a video today that brought back all kinds of crazy stuff from my youth. That sounds a little pretentious, doesn't it? Lol.. it was half a lifetime ago though, literally. I'm going to be 29 in a couple of months, and I was.. 14 or so when all this happened. My mom's generation had the Beatles, for me and my friends, it was New Kids on the Block (NKOTB for those in the know). Donny, Danny, Joey, Jordan, and Jon. THE hottest guys ever (except maybe for Danny, but of course that's all personal preference).
I thought Donny was the absolute cutest, I guess I had a thing for the rebel even back then. I had a friend who was all about Joey, she could go on about his blue eyes forEVER. So one day she and all my friends had the idea that they'd write stories about how they were going to meet the guy of their particular dreams and how they would fall in love and blah blah blah. She did hers about Joey, of course.. I don't remember who the others wrote theirs about. I had a crush on a guy in my class though, and there was no WAY I was going to write a story about him and maybe end up losing it and he would find it.. uh-UH!! So I bowed out of that little project.
Later though, a new story was written. We had a substitute teacher that year that we all made fun of. Our regular teacher lost her son to drugs, and she had a nervous breakdown.. so we had a Marine Reservist named Mr. DeVries for the year. To win us all over on his first day, he did a recitation of "Casey at the Bat" and had some of the kids acting it out. I don't remember where the nickname came from, but we started calling him Geek Boy of the North. And the story of his adventures became legend. He traveled the country, having all sorts of inappropriate dealings with other men, all of whom were cross-dressers.. he had a fetish for torn fishnet stockings, they just drove him into a frenzy. My friends had very active imaginations, to say the least. We all made appearances in the story, in one form or another. We all had 2 or three nicknames for each other, I remember my hick name was Betty Lou, and they all had hick names too.. and my friend Ginny, she was our pimp, so we all had porn star names.. I don't remember if I had one, or if I missed out on that part. But Geek Boy visited Ginny's "establishment" at one point, and ran off with one of the men that worked there. Oh, and of course, he was blonde, so he did some pretty moronic things. I think they had him super-glue something to his chest so he could have boobs, 'cause he wanted to be a woman. I think in the end had his sex-change operation, and drove off into the sunset with the man from Ginny's, and they lived happily ever after, if you can call it that.
It was very strange for me when I did see him again a few years later, at a different school, still reciting Casey at the Bat. I think when I got home from school that day I went through all my old papers and found his story, just so I could read it again. It's amazing how the smallest things can bring back such crazy memories. When I switched schools I pretty much lost touch with all of those friends I had grown up with. I feel now that I had grown apart from them anyway, for various reasons. I ran into one of them a couple of years ago at the bank, and it turns out she works for the church across the street from where I work. We made vague plans to hang out, but nothing ever came of it.
Anyway.. I hope you all have enjoyed this somewhat scary foray into the insanity that was once my life. :) And Mr. DeVries, wherever you are now, Semper Fi, my man, keep it real. You will never be forgotten.