THE SONG I MEANT TO WRITE

From the time I was in fourth grade until my early college years, I spent an inordinant amount of time trying to write song lyrics. You see, I'd always wanted to be a rock star. Travel the world, perform in stadiums for standing room only crowds, have young girls tear my clothes off and cry when I played my guitar--in short, the usual fantasy for every young boy.

Typically, these lyrics were attached to some girl I had a crush on: Lona in fourth grade, Cindy in eighth, Stephanie in ninth, Valerie in tenth, and Carolinn at the junior college. In each case, the lyrics tried to capture the romantic feelings I had for each girl, expresss the yearning of love mostly unrequited, and, perhaps, score a few points over the insensitive jocks when I handed the sheet of notebook paper to each of the girls and said in an off-hand tone, "Here, I wrote you this song."

It rarely, if ever, worked.

These attempts to write The Perfect Love Song reached a fevered pitch my Sophomore year when the Senior girl I had a crush on moved away to college and--nice person that she was--sent me several letters from her new school telling me how things were going. Kindly, she even asked if I wanted to hear how things were going with boys or would that be too difficult for me and, dysfunctional masochist that I was, I said something stupid like, "Sure. It's enough for me knowing that you're happy." Unable or unwilling to let go of my illusion, I sent her a few more songs that I wrote for her about how someday she'd be done with school and I'd be a famous rock star and we'd all be happy (and, of course, slyly hinting that maybe it would be with each other).

That girl is long gone now, and I'm married with children in a tract home development in the suburbs of San Diego, teaching writing to students who groan if you ask them to write a sentence twice. But one day, driving home from work, I heard "Hey There, Delilah," by Plain White T's and I got a lump in my throat.

That's the EXACT song, I thought to myself there in the car, that's the EXACT song that I spent over a decade trying to write.

Bravo, Plain White T's.

Thank you for doing what I could not.

It means a lot to me.