Truly, Madly, Deeply Dooo

Have you ever gone YEARS without hearing a song, only to have it pop up out of nowhere one day and then proceed to follow you around, its little earworm hooks creeping and crawling into you brain and bringing up all kinds of long-forgotten associations?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Savage Garden's Truly, Madly, Deeply. It's stalking me.

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Remember when, sometime around the time that scrunchies were on their way out, this song seemed like the absolute most romantic thing you had ever heard? I mean, come on -- "I want to stand with you on a mountain. I want to bathe with you in the sea?" That is poetic, lyrical GENIUS, people! Elton John himself couldn't write that shiz. I will forever associate it's bass-y, lilting chorus with wide-leg jeans, passing notes in the hallways and dancing awkwardly with the kid from the next homeroom over, at 3 in the afternoon, on a dirty gymnasium floor.

And my friend Sara's Bat Mitzvah, at which I realized that I was not living in a John Hughes movie and, if I were, I would be less like Molly Ringwald and more like Ally Sheedy.

First of all, I was kind of an awkward middle schooler. One day, if you're lucky, I will post my 7th grade photo. Though I have destroyed all copies of it, my best friends are bound to have one, as my yearbook that year was filled with comments about how they would save it until I became famous and then leak it to the National Enquirer. And yes, it IS that bad... Four words: Velour. Scrunchie. Side Pony. My mother also forced me to wear skinny ankle jeans which, though tres cool now, were about as hip as garbage at the time, prompting the secret object of my affection to ask me one day in math class why I "wore such ridiculous pants." Good question, D, good question.

Despite my closet full of wardrobe malfunctions, I wasn't particularly popular or unpopular; I kind of like to think I ran in the middle of the clique pack. I had a solid group of friends, and we paraded around the hallways like we owned them, arms linked in a miniature display of solidarity with our other socially-stunted brethren. So, when my friend Sara invited me to her Bat Mitzvah, I was super pumped and assumed everyone else in my little group would be in attendance, too. Um, no.

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Now, being raised Catholic, I had no idea what to expect. My understanding of Jewish tradition extended to my Uncle wearing that funny hat during his wedding, the lesson on the Maccabees that my 5th grade teacher gave during the obligatory "Multi-Cultural Holiday Celebration" phase and the fact that while my friend Nicole got 8 crazy nights of Tiffanys, I got three hours of Church and a second-hand bicycle. So, I wasn't prepared for the fact that no, my entire social circle wasn't invited. Or that, in absence of said friends, it was not polite to invite along my best friend and assume that there would be a pot luck buffet like my family had at our First Communions. I was 13, for heaven's sake; how was I supposed to know the magnitude of the cost of a single un-RSVP'ed plated dinner?! So, as I entered the Temple in my black velour Liz Claiborne dress (apparently, velour is the new black. Or was, back when the Fresh Prince ruled the fashion scene), Things Remembered jewelry box engraved with "Mazel Tov!" and gate crasher best friend in tow, you can imagine what I was thinking as I saw all of the girls up front in their pastel semi-formal dresses, giggling at one another and making intricate hand gestures to the boys they knew from Hebrew School on the other side of the room, the basket of yarmulkes for the men and Sara, looking like a movie star sitting solemnly with her parents.

Oh. Shit.

The ceremony itself was very interesting. I love learning about other cultures and religions (and have the $180 text book to prove it), so I thought it was so cool to discover that they do their readings backwards. And that Sarah could speak another language. And that after all the traditional, ceremonial stuff was over, we got to go to a bitchin' party complete with glow-in-the-dark masks, a dance troupe and more shiny beads than Mardi Gras. Sure, I didn't know anyone except for a small handful of school chums and my gate crasher best friend, but that didn't stop me from tearin' up the dance floor during the Hava Nagila or taking second place in the "Chubby Bunny" contest.

And then, with a single resonating beat of bass, Savage Garden and their ode to everlasting teen angst ruined my night.

Normally, I had a group of guy friends who would have asked me to dance -- whether out of true desure or the fact that they couldn't find anyone else who would tolerate their clumsy big feet, I'll never know -- but this was uncharted territory. I didn't know ANY of these guys, save for the very few I knew from school. Most of these guys went to the junior high across the river, and they had no interest in doing the hands-on-shoulders sidestep with someone they'd never met.

So, while literally every other girl there was out on the dance floor, swaying in sync with the magical tempo of T,M,D and imagining the arms of whichever hunk they were dancing to helping to bathe them in the sea (which, by the way, I always pictured as more of a waterfall), I sat at my table, staring wistfully and waiting for the picture-perfect Andrew McCarthy or, at the very least, Jon Cryer lookalike, to come sweep me from my solitude and twirl me around the dance floor, declaring his undying love for me and that we would, of course, be together forever.

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My Pretty in Pink moment never happened, but a hot guy from the other school DID trip over his own two feet and spill the red punch that smelled vaguely of vodka all over my precious velour ensemble. And that is why I will forever wrinkle my nose and try not to let the chubby, forlorn teenager inside of me tear up whenever I hear Truly, Madly, Deeply in an elevator or blaring softly from the soda cart downstairs.

Damn you, Savage Garden, for building me up and then tearing me down. Millions of little girls had their hopes and dreams of romance dashed because of the high bar that you set. For the briefest of moments, we believed that perhaps we were the Chosen Ones, and that one day, a dreamy Australian man with spiky hair and highlights would find us and sweep us off to our destinies.


And then Titanic came along, and Leo and Kate and Celine made us forget allll about those crazy Aussies.

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Swoon.