She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah

This time of year always makes me think of The Beatles. It was a Sunday evening in November 1995, the Sunday before Thanksgiving to be exact, when I feel completely, hopelessly, head over heels in love with The Beatles. I was 13 years old. This was the Sunday when the first part of The Beatles Anthology aired on TV, and from that moment forward I lived and breathed The Beatles.

As any adoring Beatles fan should, I own The Beatles Anthology on DVD, and yesterday I popped it in. It had been a while since I watched it (I did eventually expand my musical horizons to encompass music other than The Beatles.) I think the last time I watched it was when I forced Steven to sit through all 8 parts when we first started dating. If he couldn’t do that, then there was no way I was going to be able to continue seeing him. I knew he would like it though, as one of the reasons I agreed go on a date with him in the first place was due to a drunken debate we had over which Beatles album is the best. He thinks it is The White Album. I contend it is Rubber Soul, although I am apparently the only person on the planet who thinks this. I have my reasons.

As I watched The Beatles Anthology, I realized yet again how much certain music signifies certain parts of my life, and how closely associated my memory is with this music. The Beatles are 8th grade and freshman year of high school. I hear that music, and I instantly feel 13 again. These are my memories:

• This one girl and I used to type up Beatles lyrics and give them to each other. This was before the Internet and the possibility of just going to one of many lyrics web sites. In order to type up the lyrics, I would listen to the song on my walkman, pausing after each line so I could slowly henpeck the keyboard to get the lyrics down. I wasn’t typing 70+ words per minute back in the day, that’s for sure. It was always a competition over who loved The Beatles more with this girl. I think I won. If not, I’m declaring myself the winner now.
• I would exchange notes with my BFF that were basically glorified games of Pictionary based on Beatles lyrics. You know, a hammer for "Maxwell’s Silver Hammer," a raccoon for "Rocky Raccoon," etc. The one drawing that I will always remember was actually kinda mean. There was a girl at my middle school named Michelle who always wore really tapered leg jeans and, as everyone in 1995 knows, those are totally not the cool pants to be wearing. She also had really stringy hair that looked like she never washed it and, like me, she played the clarinet. Therefore, the picture that signifies the song "Michelle" was a girl with tapered leg jeans and stringy hair playing the clarinet. Don’t feel too bad for her. Last I heard she got rid of the stringy hair, got a boob job and was doing pretty OK for herself.
• I read a really terrible Beatle’s biography for a paper for my English class in 9th grade. Seriously, it was one of the most terrible biographies I have ever read. I have the most recent Beatle’s biography, and I still haven’t trudged through it (all 1,000 plus pages) because this other biography I read was so terrible.
• I borrowed the movie version of Yellow Submarine from the library over Christmas break in 9th grade. I forgot that we had to go to Milwaukee and therefore would be unable to return the video in time. My parents wouldn’t make a special trip to the library. I therefore had a $5 fine on my card and I carried that balance through the rest of my high school career. Instead of paying the fine, I just stopped using my library card. I used my Mom’s or Dad’s instead. I am a horrible library patron.
• I would beg my Mom to purchase me Beatles’ t-shirts from kiosks in the mall. These shirts were overly expensive and were inevitably too large for my 14 year old self. I persisted though and did persuade my Mom into a Rubber Soul shirt, a Revolver shirt and a White Album shirt. Oh how I loved those shirts.
• My stand partner in band and I would sing "All Together Now" really loudly during class. One of us would just say, "Boom boom boom," and we would be off. That really is one catchy, if not all together annoying, song.
• If my piano teacher let me pick a song to learn next, I would learn a Beatles song. I played "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" for my piano recital in 10th grade. I still have it memorized to this day. That song is also where the title of this blog comes from.

I could come up with some more, but those are the ones that came flooding back to me yesterday. Beatles, I still love you