Let’s rewind to ages 11-13. When I was young, I had a wall literally wallpapered with pages I ripped out of Bop and TeenBeat magazines. Literally a ceiling to floor, shiny with scotch tape, wallpapered wall in my basement with pictures of Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Nick Carter from the Backstreet Boys, Devon Sawa, Hanson, Andrew Keegan, Heath Ledger, JC Chasez from Nsync and -my ultimate fav- Ethan Embry.
I believed that Ethan Embry was on a special level and that, based entirely on the character he played in ONE movie that I watched obsessively, we would get along perfectly and fall in love if we were ever in the same place. I could recite all of his lines (and still can) in Empire Records. I loved that his character played bass because I did too, further proving our obvious chemistry. My new year’s resolution in 7th grade brought me to answer the phone “Empire Records, Open till Midnight, this is Mark!” just like Ethan did for about 6 months straight before I decided it was just too confusing for the person on the other end of the phone.
On a less severe level was my boy band love. I, along with a group of friends, once chased Nsync’s van down at a 97.5 PST concert and, even though they were gone in their dressing rooms, convinced the driver to let us take a picture inside the empty white conversion van simply because it was where they had once sat. Each of us has “our” assigned man who we planned to marry, mine being JC. I made photo albums with pictures, ticket stubs, magazine clippings and choice lyrics that I had typed out to commemorate every major concert event where I swore they looked at me directly when I yelled their names.
Now, fast forward to age 24. I’ve lived in LA for about two years, which brings my star-struck level practically down to zero. There are certain celebrities that I would go stupid over, sure, but for the most part I am at the point where I see, sometimes acknowledge or recognize, and move the fuck on. Yesterday, though brought a new level of stupid to this LA-centric charade: the former heart-throb crush encounter.
I started my shift at Cap City pre-dodgers game, and it was really quiet. There was one guy in my section sitting alone, and we talked a bit and he ordered a beer and said he was waiting for a friend to come before ordering food. Another guy in my section was having drinks with his uninterested wife, saying she was going to leave soon and his buddies were going to join him for his birthday. Overall, normal…until.
I left the lone beer drinker to himself until I noticed his friend had arrived. His friend, it took me about .000001 seconds to realize, was Ethan Embry. I’m not sure if I showed it, but at the moment that my eyes met his big hazel peepers, my stomach jumped and my jaw dropped open. …..wait….really?? THIS is your friend, lonely beer drinker guy??? You failed to mention that your fellow dodger’s fan friend that you were waiting to order wings with was the same guy that my 12 yr old self swore caused the sun to rise and set each day.
(This is probably a good time to insert the fact that I saw Ethan once about a year ago in a movie theater. The Rachel Getting Married screening was 21+, which means they serve drinks, and he has obviously had a few. More than once he’d turn around to strangers, ask their names, and what they thought of the scene that we just saw. Needless to say this was crushing to my 12 yr old self’s fantasy of him, so I found it pretty incredible that I got to ‘redeem’ this impression by now waiting on a very sober and polite version of my once future husband.)
I like to think of myself as a pretty cool person in social settings, but I am totally certain that I went to get his diet coke with bright red ears. I babbled something to a coworker about how incredibly strange my luck was, and only THEN did I realize that not only was I getting the encounter I once dreamed of, I was about to spend the next 9 innings charming the shit out of him. Oh man, I thought, here’s my chance to ACTUALLY fulfill my 12 yr old dream scenarios of talking about music and falling in love, regardless of my current interests.
And then, I noticed his wedding ring. Huge bummer. This bummer lead to an even bigger bummer when his beautiful blonde wife showed up half way through the game, but I got a good 4 innings of shoulder touching and smile exchanging in to placate all my 12 yr old hopes and dreams.
Amazing, you say? What are the chances that you’d find yourself waiting on your middle school crush, you say?
Well, apparently they were good yesterday, because when I went back to the birthday boy table to see what his friends wanted, I found myself meeting another set of unusually bright eyes, this time belonging to JC Chasez. Really, unassuming, business causal wearing birthday boy?? This ‘it’s-gonna-be-me-bye-bye-bye-i-drive-myself-crazy’ singing guy is in YOUR posse?
While I went to get his beer and a menu, I assessed the highly improbable situation I was finding myself in.
1. I can check two things off my middle school to-do list.
2.Its funny that a normally cool thing, like conversing with a former boyband singer you used to love, can get trumped by an even bigger cool thing, like conversing with Ethan Embry, your former obsession. Suddenly, JC seemed kinda blase.
3. If I knew then that I’d move to LA and it would become seriously commonplace to be encountering celebrities at all, I am certain my suburban self wouldn’t have believed my own future.
I went through the remainder of my night hearing my pre-pubecent voice screaming “OH MY GOD ITS ACTUALLY HAPPPEEENNNIIINNGGG!!” in my head. Regardless of this and all of the backstory I just gave, I managed to complete all transactions without mentioning the levels of hysteria I once reached from reading their likes and dislikes in Bop magazine and getting the newest fold-out poster each month.
Although it may have been flattering and possibly well received, I thought such news would weird out a married (although seemingly kinda unhappily) and sober Ethan enough to never come back (because a little part of me wants him to become my regular customer) and because, by the end of my exchange with JC, I was unimpressed enough with his current self to forget I ever cared about his silly pop songs.
While working, I was relaying all of this in real time to my best friend from grade school via text. Not surprisingly she flipped her lid, which I totally expected.
I was pleased to see that someone else understood that something so unimportant now could still be important, simply because it once was. That although one was a chain smoker and one was kinda impressed with himself, it was still exciting only because history dictated it to be so. Sometimes some things never change.
