13 Reasons – The Beatles

After everything with James, I truly went a little nuts.  Besides Dolly, who was in another state, he was my oldest friend.  I’d known him longer than I could remember.  And as I said in the last 13 Reasons entry, I thought I was in love with him.  So the idea of not having him in my life pretty much pushed me over the edge.

Later, I would equate it to having been shoved into a pit and not knowing how to climb out of it.  Not having any help in the doing, either.  At least, not then.

I struggled through as best I knew how for the rest of eighth grade.  Largely, I just didn’t care.  It killed me to see James at the bus stop, it killed me to pass him in the halls, it tortured me that he’d either ignore or rebuff all my attempts at talking to him.  I could barely stand it, and I can’t tell you how many times I thought about suicide the second half of that year.  I never acted on any of those thoughts, mostly because I didn’t know how, but I sure as Hell thought about it a lot.

The July after eighth grade ended, I was hanging around the house, not having anyone to really hang out with, not wanting to go in the pool alone, not wanting to bike that often cuz it was too hot, and I heard what my dad was watching on AMC.  It was some forty-eight hour Beatles thing or something, where they showed Hard Day’s Night, it’s making, and Help!  And all the commercials they had in between these things were for different Beatle-related items, including a two tape set of what they were showing that day.  Well, I kid you not, I must have heard the intro to Hard Day’s Night about forty thousand times that day.  Go on, play the YouTube a couple times.  But only the first, oh, 15 seconds or so.  ::Correction: first 10 seconds::

And I heard that.  All.  Day.  Long.

Now, I already didn’t like the Beatles.  Yes, there was a B.B. period of my life, (Before Beatles,) as hard as that may be for some people to believe.  Because after I got into them, I became, well, the words ‘obsessed’ and ‘fanatical’ come to mind.  Let me put it this way: I’ve forgotten more about the Beatles most people in my generation will ever know.

(Quick side story.  John Lennon was killed on December 8th, 1980.  And I can honestly say I have a personal grudge against Mark DSavid Chapman, the one who shot him.  Because John and Yoko were giving away interviews to different magazines and such back in 1980 and one interview they were giving was with the company my dad worked for for in New York at the time.  And who do you think was chosen to do the interview with them?  Yep.  My dad.  And do you know when it was set?  January of ’81.  ::Makes strangling motions::  Cuz, knowing my dad, he would have been someone John Lennon would have kept in at least light contact with.  So can you imagine?  I’d’ve grown up knowing this guy named John Lennon that randomly stops by or that we go to visit, I’d get into the Beatles, and considering me, I wouldn’t have put together that the John Lennon that my dad knew was the same one I’d begun to practically worship.  I probably would have said to him at one point, "Hey, did you know that you have the same name as one of the Beatles?"  God, I would have loved to see his reaction when I would start spouting off different Beatle facts, especially from that Pete Shotton book, which is the closest we’ll ever get to an autobiography on John.)

Okay, so yeah.  Back on subject.  I already hadn’t liked the Beatles.  But when you hear the same thing that many times in one day, you’re either gonna hate them for life, or you’re gonna love them.  Guess which way I went?

I suppose I can’t say I hated them, though.  But I never saw the point of being interested in them.  To me, they were just a bunch of now-old guys who made music when my dad was young.  Whoopee.  No biggie.  And the huge deal people were making about the anthologies, I thought it was ridiculous!  I didn’t see why it was such a huge deal that some stone-age band was coming out with these two new, unreleased-till-now songs.  Of course, I get it now, but then . . .

Well, I can literally blame, or give credit to, (depends on my mood,) the Beatles for everything that has happened to me since I got into them.  See, that first summer, I started collecting Beatles stuff.  Posters, books, T-shirts . . .  And it was the T-shirts that I started getting first.  I went over to Airport Plaza, (I guess you’d call it a strip mall? near me) to a place called ‘Now and Then records.  (It’s closed now, unfortunately.)  I was looking through the clothes rack they had there and I happened to find a Paul McCartney T-shirt.  I loved it.  I think it’s a band T-shirt for an ’89 world tour he did.  It was five dollars and I bought it.  But after I did, I was holding it up, just staring at it.  I was already a scapegoat in my school, made fun of for anything and everything, just because the students knew they could.  What the heck were people going to say to me if I came in wearing a Beatles shirt?

But the longer I stared at that shirt, the more I realized I didn’t care.  Let them make fun of me. I knew the Beatles were good.  I knew I loved their music and I knew it was worth being into them and learning about them.

Those kids were gonna make fun of me anyway.  So, I figured, why not give them something to make fun of?

And that’s precisely what I did.

I don’t remember much of my freshman year, except that I was right.  I got made fun of worse than ever when I wore that Paul shirt to school.  But by then, I also had a Sgt. Pepper T-shirt, an Abbey Road one, and probably at least two others.

I continued to collect Beatles shirts, books, pins, keychains, pocket mirrors, post cards, trading cards, anything I could get my hands on.  If it had the Beatles on it, I wanted it.  I was even lucky enough to get, for free! from a friend of my dad’s who’s a huge Beatles fan, a Ringo Applause doll.  The black suited ones, 18 inches tall, with drumsticks in his hands, and tags still on him.  Those dolls go for about a hundred dollars apiece on eBay and at the Beatle conventions.  So getting one for free was absolutely amazing.  Plus, he gave me a 12 inch Paul McCartney cartoon show caricature blow up doll.  (And yes, over ten years later, I still have both.  I’ve collected almost all of the Applause dolls at this point.  One day, I’ll have all of them.)

Anyway, I was lucky enough to get taken to a store that used to be down in Freehold called Abbey Road.  It was a store entirely stocked with Beatles stuff.  I got my dad to buy me a John Lennon necklace, a Paul McCartney action figure sort of thing, and probably one or two other things.  The necklace was what made all the difference for me, though.

It’s become something of a tradition for me to attend the Holy Family carni

val.  I’ve gone every year, save two, since I was thirteen.  I missed two because once I was sick, and the other time, I was in Kansas.  It’s always a lot of fun.  Well, it comes during the summer, it used to be in July, and sometimes the last night would be on my birthday, the 16th.  But the past seven or eight years, it’s been the second week of June.  The summer bewteen my freshman and sophomore years, I’m *pretty* sure it was in July.  In any case, I was wearing that necklace when I went.  I got on the Scrambler and the guy who ran the ride seated this redhead with me.  She and I were around the same age and we started talking.  She commented on my necklace, I told her it was a picture of John Lennon from the Beatles, she said she was a fan of Hanson, and we had a good time on the ride.

Well, when school started for me and I was a sophomore, the kids of course continued to make fun of me.  And the people I’d sat with the previous year either weren’t in my lunch period or weren’t people I wanted to sit with at all.  So for the first week, roundabouts, I sat alone.  But then, this girl comes up to me from the table next to mine and asks if I’d been at the Holy Family carnival.  I said yeah, and thought she looked vaguely familiar, and when she said she thought so, she recognized my necklace, I realized it was the same girl from the Scrambler!

Her name’s Kathy, and she invited me to sit with her and her friend, Shannon, at their table.  So I moved my tray over, got introduced to Shannon, and ate with them throughout the rest of the year.

I’ll get to that line in other entries.  The other interesting thing that the Beatles started was the fact that I attended my first rock concert because of, well, one of them, at least.  Ringo has performed at the Arts Center numerous times.  Well, one of the times he was there was on June 3rd of ’97.  And I got tickets to go.  Admittedly, it was with my dad, but what can you do?  I didn’t care, anyway.  It was freakin’ Ringo!!!!!  Since it was my first official concert, I took these long, foot or so wide pieces of cardboard, taped two together so the whole thing was about seven feet long, and painted in bright colors with black borders, "I Love You, Ringo" with a star at the end.

That concert was incredible.  The first song he did was It Don’t Come Easy, he did Yellow Submarine, he did You’re Sixteen and just before they played it, he dedicated it to "all the youg ladies in the audience."  I don’t think I’ve screamed so hard in my entire life.  That night was wonderful.  Especially when I got down right at the stage and held up my sign for him to see, (I was literally about eight feet from Ringo!) and he actually looked at me, because he thanked those of us who brought signs.

::Grins::  Anyway.  I was raised Catholic, and when I went to make my confirmation in eighth grade, I had to do a certain number of hours of community service.  Well, our family knows a reverend at a Baptist church and he said that I should be a teacher’s helper at Vacation Bible School.  It covered what I needed for the community service and I’d probably find it a lot of fun.

He was right, it really was awesome.  And I came back the following year, and the next.  I think all in all, I did it for five years?  Something like that.

Well, the third time I came back was between my freshman and sophomore years.  July 7th through 11th.  My first day there, I saw this guy that made my jaw drop.  I thought he was so cute, but I had no idea what his name was or anything!  All I knew was that before we had to break off with our classes, he was spending time with these other two guys and that I was too nervous to talk to him.  Plus, it didn’t help that I had been dumb and cut my own bangs just before VBS started.  It looked horrible, so I spent the week covering my hack job up by wearing different hats.  (Though doing that turned out to be a good thing.)

Anyway.  This guy was the gaming teacher’s assistant, which meant that he helped out with the rules for the games and helped especially the little kids succeed at whatever it was.  He and I actually talked a bit that first day, simply because we were illustrating how whatever game it was was played.  Tuesday, I couldn’t speak to him at all, because it would mean I had to approach him, because he didn’t come back to the class I was helping with for whatever reason.  But on Wednesday, there was this girl who personified the whole "tough kid" image, and for whatever reason, she decided to steal my Beatle pin hat, and throw it into the men’s restroom in the chapel, which was the area the teachers, assistants, and kids would meet each morning before splitting to their own classes.  The kids had already split off with their teachers, and that girl should have been with a class but wasn’t for some reason.  The guy, myself, and a couple of adults were still eating/cleaning up where we were.

Anyway, I asked one of the adults if he would mind going into the restroom and getting my hat.  He did and commented on the Beatle buttons on it.  I said I was a big fan of the Beatles and one adult sitting at the table asked who my favorite Beatle was.  I said that normally I was partial to John, but Ringo’s taken the spot for now, ever since the concert.

When I said ‘concert,’ my crush interest’s ears perked up.  He asked about it, and I went into my description of what had happened.  I was able to talk to him!  Yay!  I was so happy, especially since he seemed to like hearing about the concert and the Beatles in general.

I think it was on Wednesday that I told him I had these two Beatle books with the guitar chords in them for how to play the songs, but I accidentally-on-purpose didn’t bring either of them in until Friday, the last day of VBS.  (I was gonna let him borrow them so he could make copies of the songs he wanted.)  So, he realized the problem of borrowing them on Friday, and we ended up exchanging phone numbers.  (I was so happy.  Lol, I actually still have the initial piece of paper he wrote his phone number on.  It’s in the Beatles music book marking the page with the song I’ve Just Seen A Face, which was my favorite song at the time.)

He got copies of the songs he wanted, and invited me to come to Youth Group, whcih his father ran.  (Runs, actually.)  I agreed, cuz, hey, automatic chance to see him once a week.  Plus Youth Group really was fun.  So, it was win-win.

Lol.  Except for the fact that in over ten years of friendship, Ryan’s never seen me once as someone to love as more than a friend.  ::Sighs::  And that’s something I’m still trying to get over.

It was hilarious when I told him I liked him.  Looking back on it now, anyway.  See, my mom always told me I should never tell a guy I like him.  I should always "let him make the first move."  Just "act like a lady around him" and blah, blah, blah.  Well, I thought about that in Ryan’s case.  And I thought about it in cases of other guys I’d h

ad crushes on.  I’d never told any other guy that I liked him.  I was always too scared, or I’d just listened to my mom, or both.  But I realized that none of the guys I’d had crushes on before were people I still talked to.  And somehow I sensed Ryan was someone who, even if we weren’t together, I did not want to lose as a friend.  So I decided to be honest with him and just tell him how I felt.

Well, I was way too nervous and scared to say it to him face-to-face, so I thought about what I wanted to say, and I wrote it in this R.L. Stine Fear Street Diary I’d gotten.  Then, on September 7th, I brought it to Youth Group with me and after Youth Group was over, I asked a girl named Lori to tell Ryan I wanted to talk to him for a minute.  We were standing by the main church building, towards the back, by the curb at the edge of the parking lot.  I was leaning against the building and thank God, because otherwise, I probably would have fallen over!  Anyway, I handed him the diary, opened to the page with the note and said something like, "This says everything I want you to know."  Well, he read it, and he said he didn’t want to hurt me, but he really didn’t want a girlfriend at that point, but he’d like it if we could stay friends.  After all, I was about the only person he knew who actually liked classic rock, except his dad, but, to quote him, "he’s old." 

So, I’ve given the beginnings of the two chains in my life that have led me to where I am, and who I am, today.

Like I said, it was because of the Beatles that I met those two.  As well as Chuck, who I’ve yet to mention, but he’s the first link in another mini chain that connects with another aspect of my life later on.  So I can truly blame/give credit to the Beatles for all of this . . .

::Looks at Beatle poster::  You hear that guys???  ::Smiles::  Oh, well.  I still love them.