Adam’s Myspace Blog — April 19, 2008
“The First Time I Really Noticed Her”
From Adam’s personal Myspace blog, written one week after reconnecting with Emma.
It’s strange, the memories that stay with you.
I’ve forgotten most of what we read in ninth-grade English, but I remember the way Emma smiled at me that day like it’s something carved into me.
December 1989.
Fourteen years old.
Trying to look like I had it together in a plaid shirt and a pair of beat-up white high-tops.
I never did have much game — just nerves disguised as pencil tapping.
She sat two rows ahead of me, sunlight catching in her hair, and I kept telling myself not to stare. I’d noticed her before — everyone did — but that day, she looked back. Just for a second. A shy, quick smile that hit me harder than anything I’d ever felt at that age.
I remember thinking, It’s now or never, Matthews. Don’t screw this up.
So, I pulled out a sheet of notebook paper and wrote the question before I could chicken out, then folded it into one of those dumb triangles we all used back then.
Want to grab a burger after school? Just us.
My hands were shaking so badly the pencil tip nearly snapped.
When she unfolded it, her cheeks flushed pink, the way she used to do when she was nervous. I held my breath until she looked back at me and gave the smallest nod. It felt like the world shifted on its axis right then — like I’d stepped into a moment that was bigger than I understood.
That day was the start of everything for me.
I wanted to be her everything.
And for a little while, I thought I was.
Or maybe I really was — just not in the permanent way I hoped. Maybe I was meant to be her everything for that season of teenage summers and cracked-booth diners and long bus rides home.
But some people don’t belong to a single chapter.
Some people are tied to something much deeper — a place in your heart you can’t compete with.
I didn’t know that then.
I only knew how it felt to be fourteen and falling, believing that wanting something enough would make it last.
Seeing her again this month didn’t change the past.
It just reminded me how real it all was.
Songs from that year keep finding me lately — especially the ones about wanting to be someone’s everything. And I guess part of me still feels that. Maybe I always will.
For whatever it’s worth…
I meant it back then.
All of it.
— ✦ —
Listen to the song that inspired this entry here: I’ll Be Your Everything — Tommy Page
Read more about this moment here: Monday Memories
💬 Feeling nostalgic? Drop a comment and tell me your favorite ’80s/’90s song that defined your teenage years.