The Obession Connection

I have one great fear. That in twenty years, I'll open my high school yearbook and scream with horror when I see the pictures.

"Oh my gosh, did I wear THAT? What was I THINKING?!"

Ah, the nightmare of nightmares. I think it's important to be able to laugh at yourself occasionally. I mean, obviously you shouldn't laugh at yourself all the time. People would look at you like you were nuts! But occasionally? It's good. And when you end up looking back on your weirder years, wondering what the heck you were thinking, you can just be thankful you've only gotten...weirder. Yes, it happens. The weirdess will live on. Don't try to fight it, there's no point.

And so this all comes down to one thing: L&C. Like huh? you ask. Let me explain.

I remember high school as if it were yesterday. Not that it was really all that long ago. I'm not trying to sound all old and wise, because I'm definitely not old, and I'll definitely never be wise. But yesterday, I decided to go through all my old 3-ring binders from high school. I'm a packrat, I guess you could say. I don't throw anything away. Throwing things away is traumatizing. So, I had 3-ring binders, just sitting there on the shelf. My freshman one was grey, my junior one was blue, and my senior one was also blue. I guess I must like blue, although if you want to know the real truth, I like red better, but perhaps they didn't have any red binders when I went shopping. And don't even ask me whatever happened to my binder from my sophomore year.

9th grade--okay, picture this: It's 1994. I've been watching L&C for awhile now, and I'm just starting to get a little bit obsessed. Not a lot, but some. As I was going through by binder yesterday, I kept finding papers about "Great Expectations". We had to read the book that year. So all of these papers read like Pip Bios. Pip this, Estella that, Ms. Havisham this and that and this and that, and to be honest, I don't even remember what the book was about, except there was something about a wedding cake that I just know was probably really, really stale. Then I came across a piece of paper that was totally funny.

In what must have been my first L&C-related article, I had done a survey for journalism class (or maybe it was English class) on who the cutest actor in the whole world is. Guess who won? Dean! I had forgotten about the assignment until yesterday. I even found the actual survey sheet. Sure enough, Dean had gotten more votes than anyone...voted on by a classroom full of 14-year-old girls. Girls with certain good taste, I might add. But get this--I had spelled his name wrong, with an e! Dean Caine. Hahaha, that really cracked me up, I couldn't even spell.

Fast-forward one year. 1995/1996. I was taking a computer class, and had my own little Macintosh disk that had a red label. I was proud of that disk. Every time we had a class, I would change the name of the disk to something L&C related. Something like: "NOS airs in 2 days!", NOS meaning Never On Sunday, of course. I'd invent new acronyms--ILDCWAMPTMNTCM (I Love Dean Cain With A Major Passion That Man Needs To Call Me).

I don't really laugh at these things I used to do in my weirder days. Actually, I'm quite (there's an H.G. Wells word for ya) proud of myself for being the good little FOLC that I was. I never did get to start that L&C club at my school (I had enough members, but they said you weren't allowed to have clubs about TV shows--only about chess and China and safety and stuff. How rude!)

As for the clothes I wore in high school...I probably WILL open up my yearbook in twenty hears and scream with horror. But, that's how these things go.