There is a story about me at the age of 14 which gets told to people whenever Christina Florencio is around. It gets told because she’s my best-friend from childhood and she likes to expose me for the geek that I truly am with humiliating stories from our adolescence. It’s one of those stories that really should not be told unless absolutely necessary. And today, I was not with Christina, and the story got told anyway; but not by her, by Me.
I was with Jane Gair. Now Jane and I have a professional working relationship as well as a friendship, and if it weren’t for the fact that we were fantasizing about the manly adventurous windsurfers and talking about the necessity and fun of fantasies, I would not have thought to tell this story. It slipped out, one might say, in the excitement of fantasy sharing. I might as well humiliate myself before someone else claims the joy of doing it to me when I least suspect it. So here we go….We sat in her parked suv on the edge of Dallas Road in Victoria, watching the wind surfers glide across the choppy waves as we sipped our hot cocoa bought from my favourite spot in Victoria, Ogden Point Cafe. We were on the usual topic of men when, by no justified or reasonable logic, I begin to tell her the story of Jordan Knight’s birthday.
Jordan Knight was a New Kid on the Block, and by that, I don’t mean he was a new neighbour. He was the tall, dark and handsome lead singer of the teen boy band, later known as NKOTB. It was his birthday and I was something like 13 or 14 years old. I had Christina come over to celebrate his birthday with me. And what’s a birthday without chocolate cake? So I baked a chocolate cake, while Christina used my parents’ camcorder to tape us singing “Happy Birthday” to Jordan. My younger brother stood by, patiently waiting for the cutting of the cake so he could partake in the feast. And then this is the part of the story that gets a bit scary. Every girl has to dress up for birthday parties, even if they are just attended by one other witness and the guest of honour has no idea she exists. And this was a particularly special birthday, because it was for my future husband, of course. OH YES! And Christina will swear that she was fully prepared to go along with my five year plan to marry him right after graduation. So on this special day I wore the only dress I associated with special days. The year previous, I had graduated from grade school, so naturally the choice was simple. The crinkled pink and white satin, spaghetti strap dress with front bodice bow and rhinestones was the perfect outfit for baking a chocolate cake while being filmed on home video. Christina came in her weekend attire, stretchy acid-wash jeans and sweater. (sorry, honey…I gotta keep it real) We took everything from the breaking of the eggs to the pouring of the batter and the frosting.
So at this point, Christina would burst out laughing and tell you, “And then she started crying! Haaahhhaaaa.” Yes, I totally pulled out the drama queen sob and tears because I didn’t get the icing thick enough to write out ”Happy Birthday Jordan” and it was taking forever to figure it out. Okay, what the hell was I thinking? He’s never gonna see the damn cake ….just eat it! Maybe I thought I was going to send him a picture and then he’d realise it was me he was waiting for all his life. But we didn’t even do that. And by now that footage has disappeared.
Jane laughed at me hysterically, and like a loving friend said, “You’re too cute.” Okay, no. Bunnies are cute, that was just adolescent madness. I think back to who I was and what I was thinking back then and I’m at a total loss for understanding what sort of alien occupation my body and mind must have been under. And then Jane said, “But you really believed it.” Yes, I believed in the possibility of Mr. Jordan Knight Valdez so much that I had Christina 100% convinced that she would be at our wedding. Amazing isn’t it, how much we believe is possible in our youth? At that age, we believed anything was possible. And now we are older, and what is possible has really changed, but only by our ability to believe in possibilities. The girl who believed she could marry a pop icon “grows-up” and somehow gets lost or silenced in adulthood with unexpressed feelings held at bay by doubt of self-worth and social expectations.
One of my favourite qualities about my friends like Jane and Christina are their ability to take joy in imagining with me, no matter how absurd or unreasonable the fantasy. It’s the best stuff of our youth that is completely free and endlessly entertaining, uplifting and even empowering (my commitment to the Jordan fantasy taught me how to make icing that sticks!). And after our roar of laughter faded a bit and we looked out again at the windsurfers gliding across the water like miracle-makers, we looked at each other and asked, ’Why do we let that passion of imagination go when we get to be adults?’
Why, indeed? For fear of being called a fool, a child, a dreamer? I much prefer those labels than that of “adult” for a life filled with missed chances and quiet jealousies of other people’s joy from having denied oneself the playful fun in creating fantasies and imagining possibilities. Why is it that we pit responsibility against play, as if we must choose one over the other? And why do many stop believing in the possiblities that can and are born of our dreaming?
And then some of us don’t stop playing and imagining and creating, and we call them artists.
Janice Down the Rabbit Hole
