So you don’t stand out, but you don’t fit in… Weird.

The First big obsession of mine was Hanson.

I loved the music, I am partial to a bit of pop music, I was also convinced i was going to marry Zac Hanson, In hindsight i’m glad i didn’t, i’m pretty sure he has like 10-20 children now…. But most of all I liked the fact that my love of Hanson helped me make the first close friends i had ever made.

I am Admittedly a bit of an oddball, I was already a pretty weird kid, but to add insult to injury i was the only Lutheran at a Catholic School. The Thing is when you are the only Lutheran at a Catholic School, you are also the only kid at mass that isn’t aloud the Bread or wine. I know right?, its outrageous, with all the preaching about sharing and love thy neighbor etc, but you can’t share your bread and wine? what is that about?

So that left me, the one little Lutheran Girl in school to walk up to the priest and ask for a “Blessing” instead and he would just touch my forehead and send me on my way, meanwhile everyone else is having a wild fun time, pretending to be drunk because they are 10 year old and were just told they had a sip of wine. After a while I got sick of this weird little ritual and asked if i could just stay in my seat instead of going up for a “Blessing”, but i was told that was not an option because it would mess up the seating order and heaven forbid we were no longer seated in alphabetical order.

So I remained a weird loner, for the first 4 years of schooling,  at Lunch break i would grab a skipping rope and just skip around the boundary of the sports field alone… Until one day i heard a lyric that changed my life “Mmmbop, ba duba dop, Ba du bop, ba duba dop”

The Flood gates were open ladies, I was buying every Smash hits and Dolly Magazine in sight, i was hunting down those amazing four fold posters that you pulled out of the center of the magazine like my life depended on it. It didn’t take too long for my walls to become plastered in Hanson posters, to the point where you couldn’t tell what color the walls were painted. At some point i ran out of wall space and my mum didn’t appreciate me using the ceiling as an alternate so she brought me a A4 clear file and i started to fill it with Hanson posters, Interviews, News paper cuttings everything!

By the end of the Hanson Era i had 4 “Hanson folder’s” that were filled to the brim with clippings. I also had an extra, super creepy folder that was used to plan my inevitable wedding to Zac Hanson. It had a full guest list, sketches of my wedding dress and a chart showing where everyone would stand inside the church… yup it was some next level shit for a 11 year old.

It was these “Hanson Folders”, that i carried around everywhere with me, that helped me make my first real friends. I Met two girls at my School, they were a year above me, but boy did they love themselves some Hanson too! We quickly became an inseparable threesome, Erin who was going to marry Taylor, and me and Jennifer who would constantly fight about who was going to marry Zac and who was going to have to just suck it up and marry Issac.

At Lunch break i no longer needed my skipping rope, we would find a nice spot in the sun and all compare “Hanson Folders”, take turns listening to Hanson’s iconic debut album “Middle of Nowhere” through Erin’s Walkman and plan our new lives as Mrs Hanson’s.

For the first time in my young life I felt like I had a place, i felt like i was liked and appreciated and it made me feel good! The three of us were always together, until me and Jen decided to enter the school talent quest. We decided to sing the most downbeat, country sounding song on the entire Hanson album called “Lucy”. This decision was based solely on the fact that this was the only song on the album Zac had lead vocals on. We didn’t practice at all, we spent a lot of time planning out outfits though, and then we just got up there and kinda swayed in unison looking somber and heartbroken. We didn’t win, in fact i think we got booed, and after that the other girls just kinda stopped liking Hanson, and now that we had nothing in common they just kinda stopped liking me too.

I Didn’t mind too much, i was used to being on my own, I moved on, I probably skipped the pain away to be honest. Then my Mum helped me change schools to a public non-religious school. I made new friends and i got on with my life. But that initial connection, the feeling of acceptance, finally having friends for once, that is what locked me into the Fan Girl life and that is what has kept me here. The community and sense of belonging is hard to find in 2018, everyone is concerned more about getting themselves ahead, getting more “likes” on their latest selfie. But not us, the fan girls are here to build up our fave, to make sure they get the maximum number of streams on their newly dropped album in its first week, to ensure the new single goes to number one and in the process we also just happen to build up ourselves and each other,we become better people by learning from each others hardships and pain, and i think that is magical.

Oh Also, by the way, i did eventually get to meet Hanson when i was 28, it was through their fan forum and by the way, they only take group photos, so here is a photo of me ( Far left) and two random Hanson fans in the back of a tiny theater in Brisbane, with the dudes i was certain i would marry, the same dudes who helped me make my first ever friends.

“When you live in a cookie-cutter world, being different is a sin, So you don’t stand out
But you don’t fit in, Weird…” – Hanson