day 7: a song that reminds me of a certain event

let's go back in time to the year 2001.

i was a fourteen year-old eighth grade student at petaluma junior high school. it was the last dance of the school year, but it was my first school dance ever.

i was excited and nervous and praying that someone didn't spike the punch and that at least one boy would ask me to dance. i remember daydreaming in the days leading up to the dance that my blue mohawk-wearing crush, holland, would come ask me to dance and we would fall in love and live happily ever after.

however, at the time, a seventh-grader named nick had a crush on me. i knew this because earlier in the school year he walked up to me, handed me a note, and promptly ran away. the note consisted of a confession of his love, a request for me to be his girlfriend, and two little boxes labelled "yes" and "no". instead of putting a check mark in one of the boxes, i decided to just talk to him and tell him to his face that i didn't like him as a boyfriend. it actually went over well and we became good friends.

i remember standing with my friends in a circle, laughing nervously and feeling self-concious when all of a sudden "truly madly deeply" by savage garden started playing. i felt someone tap my shoulder and i turned around to see nick standing behind me asking me to dance.

he led me out to the dance floor and with each step i panicked more and more. i had seen actors slow dance in movies, but i had never done it before myself.

i was a huge ball of nerves.

this was my first slow dance and i wanted it to be special.

i took a cue from the other girls dancing with their boyfriends and placed my hands on his shoulders and started swaying.

i expected to feel his hands on my hips because that's what all the boys were doing, but his hands ended up on my shoulders.

it was weird.

so, for approximately four minutes and twenty-two seconds, we swayed in a circle with our hands on each other's shoulders, enjoying our very first (and very last) slow dance.

to this day, i can still feel those sweaty seventh-grader hands on my shoulders every time i hear this song. and i think of that fateful night when i learned that there is a right way and a weird way to slow dance.