it must be your skin, i'm sinking in

last week i talked about gavin rossdale. ever since high school, i have loved the group bush and when i found out that gavin's new cd is titled "WANDERlust" i thought "of course! i'm not the only one who feels this way." and knew that i still had that connection with him (whether he knows it or not). i haven't heard the CD yet, but will add it to my christmas list (*hint, hint*).

seeing gavin sing the theme song for the movie i went to earlier this week made me reminisce about how i first found out about bush in the first place...

it was fall 1996. as a sophomore in high school, i traveled on a coach bus with fifty students from all over the state of north dakota to kansas city, missour for the fall FBLA (Future Business Leaders of America) regional convention. there were a few people from my school, including my friend lyn who was very outgoing and fearless. the rest of the students on our bus i did not know.

the convention was in a large hotel and lasted about 4 days. the first day, lyn and i were exploring the hotel and saw a guy she had met on the bus, chris. i had seen her talking to him on the bus and told her i thought he was cute, so she brought me over to him and the three of us chatted for a bit. a few minutes later, chris's friend came over and put his hand out to introduce himself in a very self-assured way. "hi, i'm george james mcdonald junior." i was instantly in love. i forgot all about chris. george was tall and lanky with dark hair. he was wearing the ultra-cool long-sleeved t-shirt with a short-sleeved shirt over it and baggy jeans - totally grunge that was popular in the 90s. he was from cavalier, north dakota which was incidentally the town next to where my mom and cousins had grown up, so i thought we had something in common.

they invited us to their room later. lyn and i went on our way to the pool - i was wearing a bikini and overalls (back when they were really cool). i remember the swimsuit. it was royal blue with white piping. anyway, they let us in just as SNL was starting. george was on the balcony and once the musical act started, he ran into the room "bush is on! bush is on!" he was so excited about the group that i had to be interested - i had never seen anyone so entranced by music before. we hung out a few times that weekend, but nothing extraordinary. on the way back home to north dakota, i arranged it so i could be in the back of the bus across the aisle from him and chris. i tried really hard to be cool the whole time. he was a nice guy, but i don't think he noticed me either way. after i was home i immediately went out and bought sixteen stone and also fell in love with bush.

this was around the time that email was starting to get popular. people had prodigy accounts and AOL was just starting to get big. when we'd chat with people in chat rooms online, everyone would be surprised we had 'electricity" and "computers" in north dakota. my friends and i met creepy guys in the military who wanted to fly out to north dakota to meet us even thought we told them we were only 15. this was also the year that the schools started giving students email accounts. i think my email was derdmann@sendit.nodak.edu or something like that. since the names were easy to figure out, i figured out george's email and sent him a note. he wrote back and i remember him telling me about a bloody nose he had. we exchanged one or two emails over a few months, but since he was a senior, his email account soon did not work. i heard he went to college at MSU (not far from my house in fargo) the next school year and i forced my friends to drive me around campus to see if we spotted him. once i saw a poster on a street pole that had pictures of him and chris - they were in a band rocking out to music similar to bush. i called the number on the poster and talked to chris - he remembered me from the convention the previous year. i left my number in case george wanted to call, but he never did. i felt that i was pretty close to stalking territory, so i didn't call back. i saw him a few years later at a street party in walhalla (the town where my mom and cousins are from). i didn't talk to him, but he was still crushable.

to this day, george is one of my favorite names and its because of him, not our laughable leader.

nothing ever came of my crush on george james mcdonald junior, but i have been a huge fan of bush ever since.