you grew up at point a. i grew up at point b.

this is not where our story starts. i had a normal childhood i.e. boring so we are gonna fast forward to may in tennessee. columbia was a whole lot like california in the spring and mild weather equated in good moods for all. this was bizarre for a movie set, especially a disney one where time and budget were upheld like the ark of the covenant. the lord struck down uzzah and punished king david for taking shortcuts to expedite moving the covenant along; but nobody was gonna do a damn thing to peter chelsom for getting his show on the road. david only had to answer to god. poor old pete was answering to the house of mouse.

somewhere in the shuffle of it all was a boy with a real awkward haircut in a wranglers shirt about 2 sizes too big and a girl who got blessed with orbs for eyes and porcelain for skin. he is me and she is you. that is some real awkward grammar but i think you get it. back where that boy came from the football team all kept her poster in their lockers for inspiration, but that was the kind of awkward tidbit you just don't share with people when you first meet them. (ha...)

i like to pretend that boy was not me. so he stayed away from her as long as he could. he knew he was gonna fumble something awful if she even looked his way. he had been talking real loud about how she was his crush and he was sure the news had made it back to her at this point. he just knew somebody had told her. that was awkward as all hell, and he just knew he had to stay away from her. fate (read: that cyrus girl and the worker of the lord peter chelsom) had other plans.

"hi, i'm lucas?"

"awesome. nice to meet you, i'm taylor."

"i know?"

i do not remember the exact conversation. i vaguely recall the hilt in my voice making me sound like i was a damn valley girl. i recall you looking semi-amused and i also recall telling you at one point that the football team all kept your poster in their lockers for inspiration. but that was that - you weren't staying on set for very long, just to bless us with your voice and jet on out.

i saw you again twice thanks to that movie. there was a vip screening and a premiere in nashville. you didn't have to make either one since none of the other folks with cameos bothered. premieres are a lot of work to attend, i have learned, and if you ain't got patience you can forget about it. but you came. you came to support your friends and support the film and during round 2 i managed not to shed light on any embarrassing fast facts. didn't trip over my words too much. only ogled you a bit. this did not stop the call i got a few weeks later from being shocking. i was on a plane and my manager don't never listen to the rules about cell phones not being allowed in-flight. i was glad for that this time. your people said you wanted me to stick in town to be in the video. we ran off the plane before the flight attendants could stop us.

it was a lot of hours of awkward kissing and gawking from teenagers i did not know, but i did not complain. i am too smart a man for that and alison taylor's dress had too many cutouts for that. you made me laugh and i know i saw you checking me out so i might have been smitten. you let me come to a few shows. let me sit in the soundpit while you sang about being fifteen. just me and your mother. she gave me a hug and some girls set off car alarms with their screams. you gave me a hug and the world went deaf.

then there was a lapse. you get real busy sometimes and i did too right then. you went off to play shows and win awards and i went off to play gears of war and win missions. the vmas were gonna be back in new york city that year. you got nominated. it wasn't a real big surprise, not to me at least. and so it was the 13th of the month when you proposed another meeting.

"i want you to be my date."

"are you sure?"

"yeah."

i shouldn't have to recap the night. kanye west is always gonna be insane, megan fox is always gonna be hot, beyonce is always gonna be amazing, and you are always gonna be a winner. sure as hell won me over that night. you looked stunning and the way you could be humble and genuine after everything that night was amazing. so amazing i found myself in a nashville diner a week later at 1am waiting for a hummer to show up. by 3 am you were my girlfriend. THIS IS SO DAMN MELODRAMATIC, I FEEL LIKE I'M WRITING AN EPISODE OF DEGRASSI JUNIOR HIGH OVER HERE.

from there we had tour buses and dinner dates, false arrests and imprisonments, playgrounds and princesses, samantha and shakira and a whole mess of other stuff i couldn't even cover. i thought for a long time about how to end a story that isn't finished yet. even the neverending story didn't cover that well enough for me. so i'm just going to end this here. i'll see you in the next chapter.



awkward me bids you auf wiedersehen.

fin.