Project Love: Day #3

Love Fades

When I was a kid I had several celebrity crushes. My biggest was In fact, Tom Cruise. I had a poster of him on my wall in his Top Gun fighter uniform that I would kiss every night before I would go to bed. I loved that poster and was destroyed the day that I “took” it down.

It was a day that has seemd to live on for me. It was a very sad yet embarrassing moment in my life, one that continues to haunt me. Telling you this story is a huge step for me because I swore that I would never ever talk about this moment again in my life. But I’m thinking that maybe if I share my embarrassment with you then I will somehow erase it from my brain and not think about it every day.

Seriously I think about the day that the Tom Cruise poster came off my wall… EVERY. SINGLE. DAY!

It was a rainy summer day. My friends were gone and I was forced to entertain myself at home. We didn’t have cable TV, video games, iPods or Wii. However, I suspect if we had had those things, I would have been bored with them as quickly as my kids are now. But I digress.

What we did have were cassette tapes. And as you can imagine, my favorite cassette at the time was the Top Gun Soundtrack. I mean seriously, who didn’t love, Playing with the Boys by Kenny Loggins or You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling by The Righteous Brothers

Am I the only one that used to fantasize that Tom Cruise would meet me in the bathroom at my local McDonald’s in the mall and break out with “you never close your eyes anymore when I kiss your lips?”

Like most little girls with a huge crush on Tom Cruise, my favorite song was definitely, Take My Breath Away by Berlin. I used to listen to that song over and over and over again. Listen, rewind, listen, rewind, listen, rewind. In fact, I listened to it so much that I finally wore the cassette tape out. Lucky for me this was the day and age of the “single soundtrack”. So I convinced my dad to take me to the mall so that I could spend my allowance on a new cassette. And when I got it home I got smart and recorded it ten times in a row on a blank cassette so that I wouldn’t have to rewind it anymore. Smart, I know…classic cassette tape to cassette tape recording…seems so ancient doesn’t it?

WARNING: Here comes the embarrassing part. I usually like to be warned of instances like this so that I can huddle in the fetal position behind my couch with a pillow over my eyes.

Take My Breath Away…a classic! I loved this song SOOOO much…the lyrics were so romantic, so inspirational and at one moment they just took me away. I got up and was singing at the top of my lungs to one Mr. Tom Cruise. I was stroking his face with one hand while singing into my hairbrush with the other, gazing lovingly at the Flat Stanley version of my future boyfriend. There was no stopping me, it was just me and Tom eye to eye, cheek to cheek. The song was coming to a close and I gently rubbed my index finger across his beautiful, surgically enhanced lips when in the flash of a second, the music stopped, I hear my brothers giggling, I jump onto my bed while grabbing the poster at the same time screaming at them out of pure embarrassment.

I was yelling at my brothers to go away, screaming to my mom to make them go away and crying because I had just ripped my poor boyfriend in half. The devastation of that moment when you are scared shitless yet embarrassed at the same time…This feeling will live on forever in me!

I will never ever forget this moment in my life. And to this day, I believe it was that particular moment that I no longer had a crush on Tom Cruise.

My parents replaced the poster for me at Christmas, but I didn’t have the heart to hang it up. In fact, just looking at the poster or the thought of hanging it up made my stomach cringe with embarrassment.

So long Mr. Cruise…may you be loved by many others.

Lesson learned: When singing to a Flat Stanley version of your future boyfriend, shut the bedroom door.

Love is a Battlefield