"And if you try to keep us down we're gonna come right back!"

Okay, because I don't want to ramble on incessantly about it for too long - I promise that this will be my last posting about the New Kids on the Block.

Unless I go to a concert on their reunion tour. Because then you'd better believe you'll hear about it.

At any rate, I've decided that if anyone wants to feel like they're about 15 years younger all that needs to happen is for their childhood boy-band heartthrobs to announce their reunion and plans to come back on the music scene - and still be all heartthrobby. That's how I've felt ever since Tuesday when I first heard of such goings on with my own teenage boy-band crush. Today I just got darn giddy (internally mostly, I can't have those things gushing out now - I'm an ADULT).

For those of you who haven't seen the Today Show clip yet, here it is. Please note the gross amount of 25-35 year old women in the crowd:



Looking back, I have to say that I wasn't the craziest or even the biggest or most extravagant New Kids on the Block fan, but I was still a fan. I knew all the words to all the songs, I owned all the cassettes, I had a couple of posters, I had slumber parties where we watched the Hangin' Tough Live video and stayed up all night singing NKOTB songs. I entered the contest to go on the cruise with them (and lost). My first celebrity crush was on a New Kid. There was something about Donny Wahlberg singing "Cover Girl" that I just knew he was singing to me (yeah right), and I even entered a contest to win a sweaty towel he had thrown from a stage during a concert in a Tiger Beat magazine (uh... gross?). I was going to marry Donny Wahlberg (again - yeah right, but such are the thoughts of a silly 12 year old).

Well... those days passed and the New Kids disappeared. Joey and Jordan went on to passing solo careers, Jon and Danny disappeared, and Donny played a heroin addict in Bruce Willis' bedroom in "The Sixth Sense". I watched my sisters go through their boy band stages with Hanson (Dawn) and N*Sync (Becky) and smiled with nostalgia as they did the things I did with NKOTB. I even went to a Joey McIntyre concert back in 1999 or 2000 when he came to Hampton Beach because I knew it was the closest I'd ever get to going to a NKOTB concert. It was a blast - even though "Please Don't Go Girl" sounded completely different now that Joey's gone through puberty (he sang it for the encore). "The Right Stuff" became the "stuff" of a 1:00 AM dance on a Leadership Retreat in college where I did a tired version of the dance to the amusement of a few female student leaders.

But a reunion? Reunion tours are the things of old washed up rock bands who just want to have one more go 'round, playing the old music and singing out the old songs to the crowds of their middle-aged fans. Reunions, come backs, and such things are not the things of boy bands. Or... are they?

On the Today show and various other outlets today the New Kids have announced that they'll be making a come back. Tons of 25-35 year old women around the country are in a heated frenzy (yes, even the committed and married ones) and there are discussions on my craft boards about the old boxes of face pins, lunch boxes, and posters that people still have. I instantly feel like I'm 12 years old again singing "I'll Be Loving You (Forever)" in my bedroom into my microphone (hairbrush). I don't want to marry any of them now - I'm quite happily married, thank you very much - but I'm excited at the prospect of being able to see my teenage boy band in concert.

I've long since gotten rid of the couple of posters and all the cassettes I had and am left with a NKOTB Greatest Hits CD and memories of a teenage boy-band phase (and a new desktop background at work). I'm excited, and as a friend of mine said to me - I really hope that they don't come back and stink. That would be a giant let-down and they'd fall into the category of come backs that never should have happened.

But... they're the New Kids. And since our teenage boy bands are infallable and never a let-down, they totally won't.

Right?