what you once wanted.

Yes, at one time, I wanted an effing Teddy Ruxpin. It should show you how much I wanted one and was in love with the poor specimen by the fact I had to Google how to spell it. And I was way off. But none the less, the story must go on, so continue reading. Please.

This week I am in Chesapeake, visiting friends and family. This is my hometown. It's where I grew up and where I will always call home. I was with a friend and her husband at Big Woody's. It's a bar, and pretty much the only place people go out in Chesapeake. I was drinking my nice cold Coors Light when I noticed a guy in the corner of my eye. He was pretty tired and haggard looking but I couldn't shake the feeling I knew this guy.

I won't name the guy (to save me from my own embarrassment, and on the off fact he is reading this and thinks I want him to contact me because that is so not the case), but he's a guy when I was in high school that I was totally enamored with. Of course he was a little bit older (i.e. probably 5 years) and way too bad boy for a Greenbrier Christian Academy high school junior like myself, but he had my attention. I wanted him. In a bad way.

Anyways, I was almost too embarrassed to admit to my friends that I thought the guy at the bar was this same guy. The one I used to sloppily make out with and secretly wish I could marry. Now if you had seen this guy (and I couldn't dare my little soul take a picture because that would be just plain rude), you'd understand the issue here. He was tired. And haggard. He was way bald. He was either missing a few teeth or had a gap the size of a World Cup soccer net. Either way it wasn't pretty. He wasn't pretty. I wondered if this could be the same guy that I wanted so badly to be with in high school.

Luckily, after a few beers I was able to coax a local police officer (off-duty of course) to casually and non-nonchalantly introduce himself to said guy and see if he was one in the same. After a few chugs of beer and some laughing, lo and behold, it was not the same guy.

Phew. Sigh. Of. Relief.

But that led me to this amazing discovery. What you once wanted - even the things (or boys) that you closed your eyes and prayed for - may not be the same things you want now. No way in HELL would I date this 20 year senior haggard chain-smoking look-a-like guy (again, the picture would explain and make me seem less vain and materialistic), but at the time, he was, at one time, the apple of my eye. The caramel coated apple of my eye. Kind of like when I wanted that stupid Teddy Ruxpin or MC Hammer pants. (I wanted MC Hammer pants so badly my mom signed me up for Kids-Can-Sew and I had to make my own cool-kids pants.) Or a Jordan Knight sleeping bag to take to my neighbor's slumber parties. Those things were to die for back then, but now? I had not a care in the world to have them.

Funny how things change, right? And at the same time I'm making this scary "please don't be him" epiphany, my friend (recently divorced and now happily remarried to someone else) asked the same thing about the guy she was once head over heels in love with. He too was like the Purple Ford Ranger with the "PRPLE HAZE" license plate I had begged for. Thank goodness my parents didn't give me everything I wanted.

.jl.