The New Jan on The Block

I saw the guys from "New Kids on the Block" on the Today show a few weeks ago. I could not believe how many screaming women were standing there; the host and the guys could hardly be heard above the din.

Then I heard an old NKOTB song on a cable music channel a few days later and I was slapped in the face by my lack of romanticism. (My apologies, Alba, your Romantic poems are classics to be sure!)

The song was all, "Oh girl, I want you to be mine, you're so special, yadda yadda." I'm listening to it and thinking, What B.S.! Guys do NOT think like that. Some woman writer wrote that and some producer told them to sing it, and the little girls fell for it.

Which is very unlike the old me. My teenage rock-star crushes were Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett. They were way before NKOTB but just as lame, I'm sure. I actually remember crying as I listened to one song over and over -- it was probably the same type of "You're so special I just can't live without you" type of crap.

And now although I still think of myself as loving and caring, I also am such a different person that I have a hard time knowing who I'm looking at when I go past a mirror. Is that a 40's thing? A "married 13 years" thing? A "the kid's in school all day now" thing? Who knows. I only know it's not always easy to integrate new me with old me.