NKOTB: A Salute to My Youth

Today I am thankful for my parents. They've always tried to give me everything they could, and they've been supportive of even my most foolish fancies. To illustrate this:

The first concert I ever went to was none other than the super stars of the 80's, New Kids on the Block. My loving parents bought me tickets for my birthday when I was in the 5th grade and my sister and I puff painted our t-shirts and Keds and got ourselves geared up to meet Jordan and Joey, the men of our 10 year-old dreams. We kissed our NKOTB pillowcases before we left.

Of course we never did end up meeting them, since 30,000 other girls in the area had basically the same plan as us. But we did manage the second best thing: the New Kids hotline. What's more brilliant than a 900 number where you can have a private chat with your fave New Kid? I just know Jordan was waiting by the phone for me to call. So one day while my older cousin was babysitting us, my sister and I waited until she was elbow-deep in cookie dough and hotfooted it to the phone to call up our respective beaus. We had a grand old time, chatting it up with the electronic version of the talented performance artists. 75 minutes later we finally got hungry and the smell of cookies reached our noses, so we headed back downstairs.

A month later my aunt got the $75 bill for our talking jag and made my cousin iron a shirt for every dollar of that bill. To this day my cousin will not let me forget about the time she played wingman so I could chat with Jordan Knight. Let me tell you, friends: it was worth every penny.