I had barely stepped off the plane in Boston when five familiar faces stared back at me from a wall. It was a mural celebrating the city’s most important icons, and there among them were the New Kids On The Block.
I should say up front that I didn’t choose Boston. My cousin did. At 48, she had just boarded her first-ever plane for her first real big-girl trip, so the destination was hers to pick, and I was happy to be along for the ride.
I’d been here a couple of years ago, also on a girls trip, and I have nothing against the city. I’m simply the kind of traveler who likes to see new places. Still, I enjoyed it enough the first time to repeat a few favorites, and I suspect Boston has surprises left for me.
But that mural stopped me in my tracks and carried me straight back in time.
If you’re a woman in your late forties or early fifties, you already know who calls Boston home. The rest of the world may abbreviate them to NKOTB, but to me they will always be the New Kids On The Block, and the name is the first thing that surfaces whenever someone says “Boston.” Needless to say, standing in that terminal, I wasn’t a travel-weary adult with a carry-on. I was back in middle school.
In those days, the New Kids were the rave, the dream of every young girl. Their posters covered my bedroom wall, and “I love Donnie” was inked on my hand daily, because that was simply what you did. I lost countless hours to MTV, waiting for one of their videos to come on.
I even attended a concert in Austin, Texas, with my sister and the same cousin I’m traveling with now. That may be why the boys are resonating with me right now. I can still remember scoring the tickets, which was its own kind of ordeal. There was no tapping a screen from the couch. We called Ticketmaster on a landline and waited in a phone queue for a customer service representative, and your place in line decided how good your seats might be. Today the process is electronic, but the white-knuckled waiting feels much the same.
“I was at a Freakin’ New Kids On The Block concert, and nothing else mattered.”
When the night finally arrived, our seats were in the nosebleeds, and I didn’t care one bit. I was at a Freakin’ New Kids On The Block concert, and nothing else mattered. The high lasted for days.
Fast forward thirty-five years, and I saw them again. I’m pleased to report they’ve still got The Right Stuff. They were every bit as good as I remembered, proof that while some things change, some things stay exactly the same.
Which brings me back to Boston, and to the itinerary. Wahlburgers is on it. As I sit down to eat, I fully expect to drift back to that Austin stadium, dreaming of meeting Donnie Wahlberg and hoping he falls instantly, hopelessly in love with me.
After all, a girl can dream, can’t she?