Walking Down The Hallway From Side-To-Side
When I was in high school, I had a crush on this girl named Diana. Actually, the crush started well before high school but, for our purposes here, we’ll isolate it to the few years when I thought about her every hour (and not just every day).
Diana was about 5 feet tall, had straight blond and big blue eyes, made even bigger with copious amounts of mascara. She was a prodigious flirt and fit quite a nice figure into that small package. As testified to by the way she drew the boys walking behind her between classes, she was one of the few girls in grade ten who moved as much from side to side when she walked as she did from front to back.
What made this all the more punishing than your average schoolboy crush was that Diana could sing. Like a songbird. In fact, Songbird and just about every other Fleetwood Mac tune from Rumors were at the top of her repertoire back in 1977.
I already had a mildly intense enthusiasm for Stevie Nicks; having a reasonable facsimile cooing at you in between choir rehearsals was such an breath-taking experience that, even now, it leaves me a little rattled.
My schoolboy crush on Diana went unrequited. I can’t say today that I regret it; had it been a consumated relationship, it wouldn’t be quite so fun for my memory.
High school came and went and do did Diana. She went on to sing in a rock band, marry a cop, divorce same and who knows what. I went on to college and carried my Stevie Nicks passion on for many years. To this day, up in Mom’s attic, with the 2000 records I swear will someday get delivered cross country, are two framed Stevie posters. One of them is a promotional poster for the Wild Heart; the other is what I understand to be a fairly rare copy of the poster above — from her HBO special.
This week marks the anniversary of her Bella Donna…and still more unrequited love for the Music Junkie.
