Desert Island Top Five Fridays

Friday, February 8, 2008

I have a new blog feature to announce. In the tradition of Nick Hornby and High Fidelity, I am pleased to bring you Desert Island Top Five Fridays. Have you read High Fidelity? Have you at least seen the movie? If so, then you're probably already familiar with the concept of the Desert Island Top Five lists. If not, well, it's simply a list of your top five, all-time, bestest ever, most favoritist _________. The _________ being the thing that will change every other Friday. Got that? Great. Then please play along at home or in the comments. Or you can repost on your own blog and leave a link to it in the comments so that I'll know you did a Top Five Friday and go read up.

So for the first installation of Desert Island Top Five Fridays we have . . . (drum roll, please) . . .

Top Five Junior High Slow Dance Songs

(Warning: Clicking the following links will take you to the videos in all their hairbandy glory.)

5. "Patience" - Guns and Roses
Frankly, this one only makes the list because it was my first slow dance ever. With my first boyfriend ever. I'm not sure if we were even boyfriend and girlfriend at that point. The "do you like me/check yes or no" note may have come later. But if I recall correctly the slow dance was a Big Deal. So big, that it took us the entire dance to get around to it and we only got one slow dance in. Ah, the seventh grade dating rituals. . .

4. "Faithfully" - Journey
I'm cheating here (see how that works, I make the rules and promptly break them) because my most poignant memory featuring "Faithfully" actually comes from my junior year prom. I went with a guy friend, as I did for so many proms and homecomings, but off and on throughout the year I'd had a crush on a senior named Jorge. Jorge was my pal. My bud. And anytime one of us was interested in the other, the other was, of course, not interested. But somehow we managed to end up dancing this one song together. And everything clicked. Just in time for him to leave for California a month later. Suck.

3. "I'll Be There For You" - Bon Jovi
While it was a favorite among my junior high school peers and a staple at school dances, I will forever remember this song for the number of times I played it on repeat during my breakup with my first ever boyfriend (see Number 5, "Patience" - Guns and Roses).

2. "Purple Rain" - Prince
Purple Rain was the most coveted slow dance song if only because it was nine minutes long. Nine minutes! Even playing seven minutes in heaven got you a mere seven minutes of cuddling with your sweetie. There was a lot of strategic shuffling going around in the final moments of junior high school dances so that you could be standing near the exactly right person to dance that song with. Getting the right person could make or break a dance. Getting asked by the wrong person made it the longest, most terrible slow dance song ever.

1. "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" - Bryan Adams
I'm pretty sure I'm giving up all pretense of coolness to admit that this is my all-time number one junior high school slow dance song. But it is. It was the song that ended every prom, every homecoming, every winter formal from the time I was 13 on. And. . . I loved it. I still love it. I hear it in the car and it takes me back to that dimly lit junior high cafeteria where I'd wait in my denim skirt and jangle bracelets, hoping that my homeroom crush would leave his group of guys and come ask me to dance. Sigh. . .

Anyway, that's it for my trip down memory lane. What's in your top five?