Gullible's Travels

I admit that I've always been a bit gullible.  Especially growing up.  Unfortunately I'm a little more cynical than I used to be.  But growing up you could tell me something and I would look at you wide-eyed and innocent and take your word for it.  I once believed my friend (who shall remain nameless) when she told me she was pregnant with her cousin's baby.  We were all of ten I think.  I had no idea how one got pregnant but even I knew that was scandalous news.  When I told my friend I had noticed she had put on weight she said, "I'm not pregnant!  I was just telling you that."  Boy did I have egg on my face.  The question is why did she tell me such a ridiculous story?  The answer: because I'd believe it.  She was not the first or the last person to tell me something that I quickly took as the gospel truth.  In one case I believed a story for years before the guilty party admitted she had made it up.

Exhibit A:  This picture of a lovely blond girl rocking her sky high eighties hair resembles in many aspects my older sister circa 1991.  Yes, she's blond and beautiful and I'm not at all bitter that the Cooper-Clark genes conspired to give her the best mix.  Not one little bit.  Anyway, back in the day I used to long to get my hair to do that perfectly hair sprayed bang wave.  My sister was a pro.  I on the other hand being five years younger was just coming out of the phase where my mother did my hair.  From grades one through five you could find me on the playground sporting Laura Ingalls' classic pioneer braids.  I can't blame my mother too much.  What was she to do with super thick frizzy hair?

The alternative as I soon discovered when I picked up a brush for myself was a white girl afro.  I found my sixth grade school pics the other day and when my husband saw it he exclaimed, "Woh!"  I swear he suppressed a shudder.  Let me just say this, a green body suit mixed with a horrible vest and hair pulled up to the middle and slicked down with hair spray while the rest of my hair floated frizzily around my shoulders like a lion's mane does not exactly attract Dylan Daines' big brown eyes.  Ah Dylan, how I pined for your colorful Girbaud clad self to look my way.  I guess if my awkward hair and shy personality didn't turn him off, me accidentally farting during reading time probably did.  But that's another story for another day. 

I will come back to my fibbing older sister in a second.  Let me detour from my regrets over my sixth grade sense of style to avert your attention to the five guys pictured above.  NKOTB.  If you don't know what that means then you weren't a teenage girl in the early nineties.  These guys were the original boy band.  Trail blazers years ahead of their time.  They are New Kids On The Block.  My personal favorite: Jordan pictured center in the red and black jacket.  What a hottie.  Look at that hair.  Oh my.

Although my sister would probably deny it, she liked these guys first.  I didn't even know of their existence before she liked them.  Something went terribly awry though.  My sister got into a phase where she was too cool to like these dorks.  Too mature.  Also, she discovered grunge.  These guys?  They are the polar opposites of Kurt Cobain.  Obviously as I dreamed of meeting Jordan and making him fall in love with my sixth grade self my sister mocked me.  Still I stayed devoted and kept the faith.

My sister went on vacation with her best friend's family to southern California around this time.  When she got back I listened with rapt attention as she divulged the following story.  Her best friend and her had been walking along Venice Beach.  A couple of boys approached them.  One of them looked familiar.  Famously familiar.  His name?  Joey McIntyre.  The youngest, dare I say baby faced member of NKOTB.  He's the one on the far right that looks like he's wearing a tad too much blush.  So Joey and his friend asked my sister and her friend out, but guess what?  They said no.  Turned them down flat.  Because as my sister implied, they were too cool for those dorks.  I couldn't believe it.  My beautiful sister had been asked out by a member of New Kids.  That's what the hard core fans call them, just New Kids.  Well of course she had.  I didn't doubt for one second she was telling the truth.  After all I had grown up idolizing her.  If she would have told me that Tom Cruise asked her out I would have found that story credible too.

Time passed.  Lots of time and years later I brought up her brush with nineties fame.  The result?  She laughed.  Laughed as if she couldn't believe I had believed for all those years her conjured story of teen romance and rejection on Venice Beach.  And that's the longest I've believed a made up story.  I think.