I have a dirty, scandalous confession to make. You might even call it slightly perverse. However you take it, you'll be surprised. OK, here goes: I'm a card-carrying member of the Hanson fan club.
And I'm not ashamed of it. I continue to be proud of this obsession because Hanson means something more to me than music. Yes, this sounds like the beginning of a clich?d "most important thing to you" College Writing essay, but I assure you it's not. Sure, their music is cute and catchy. In fact, I'm going to go so far as to say that it's better than a lot of music I've heard. Hanson is unpretentious. They write simple lyrics like, "Where's the love?" At concerts, I screamed along to the lyrics, swayed to the ballads and clapped when Taylor told me to put my hands together. I ran to the merchandise stand to snatch up the newest tour T-shirt.
But looking back on the concerts, I don't remember the music. I remember the atmosphere. I remember screaming teenage girls pushing, yelling, even punching each other just so they could get an inch closer to the stage. I remember that I didn't understand why my eyes got teary the first time I heard "I Will Come to You." I remember sitting outside in line for hours before each show, making friends and enemies with the girls near me.
I remember strategizing for hours about how to meet Hanson. I remember planning road trips to the band's hometown of Tulsa, OK. I remember thinking that if I could only meet them, one of them would see me and fall instantly in love with me, and would pull me out of the crowd to join the band backstage.
Of course, I never took the road trip, and I only met them at a routine autograph signing in Virginia. Not one of them ever fell in love with me. Instead, my obsession drifted away as the real world took over. Eventually I pushed aside the world that Hanson had created for me. As I was forced to confront a world of school work and after-school jobs, the world of clipping out magazine articles, staying up late to watch television appearances and crying out of frustration at not meeting them disappeared.
Recently I found myself standing outside on a chilly October night, waiting with some friends to catch a glimpse of the Hanson brothers as they walked out to their tour bus. Why, you ask, did I decide to go to a Hanson concert more than six years after the brothers' first single was released? I went to see Hanson half out of sick fascination to see a band years past its prime, but also to recapture the innocence of loving a teeny-bopper band.
I needed a night to return to the feeling that this band is the most important thing in the world, and just even looking at them means everything will be OK. I needed to go back to a life where days were measured in how long it had been since I'd seen Hanson, and how long it would be until I would see them again. And for those few hours, exactly that happened. I was taken back to a world where "MMMBop" wasn't just a meaningless jumble of letters, but a basis for life.
