Rock.

People, the Fooled By April hiatus (or for me, the HIGH-atus. Not true, mom) is coming to an official close and it is time again to rock.

Tomorrow night we take New Bedford by storm. I haven't been to New Bedford in a lot of years, but I have a strong emotional connection to it anyway. When I was 14, I had one of my first girlfriends, a short summer "romance" with this girl Marcy, who was from New Bedford. There wasn't too much to it, some hand holding, some awkward kissing attempts and a horribly rejected grab for the Holy Grail that was (and is) second base. Anyway, it was all pretty innocent and I wouldn't even remember it had she not scarred my poor 14 year old psyche like she did.

The last day of summer we took a walk and she said she didn't like me anymore. Fine. Even at 14 I had heard that speech a few times. But she followed it up by telling me that my guitar playing sucked (which, of course it did - I had been playing for two months) and then the kicker....that if I didn't have sex by the time I was 15 then it meant no girls would ever like me and that I was an irredeemable loser. Needless to say, as a girl who had boobs and, moreover, hadn't let me touch them, I knew that she had an intelligence far vaster than mine and her words hit home.

So I freaked out and worried incessantly about making that 15th year count. And, well, let's just say I missed the mark by quite a while. But all was not lost, my guitar playing got better and in time I did get over Marcy's warning. Meanwhile, she had two kids by the time she was 18 (I guess people "liked" her) and eventually I lost track of her.

So Marcy, if you're out there maybe I'll see you tomorrow....