25 years ago: I'd Like To Get To Know You Well - Howard Jones

This song pulls at my 80's heart strings; it has such a sentimental 80's sound. My memory that goes with it isn't sentimental, however. It's just a funny, typical 80's school girl memory.

I remember about a year after this song was out, I was listening to a radio show at night on 97.1 The Eagle in Dallas when I heard a girl I knew from school call in and dedicate this song to a boy in school that she had this insane school-girl crush on.

I couldn't believe my ears that she would go that far with her crush, broadcasting it to the entire Dallas / Ft. Worth metroplex. I wasn't friends with this girl, but everybody knew she had a crush on this boy because she wrote it all over her folders, and she would pretty much tell him to his face that she had a crush on him in one way or another every day in class. To her, he was all of Duran Duran. It was as if he was a celebrity.

To him, she was a scary stalker. He wanted nothing to do with her and yet she seemed not to notice this. I was just the opposite of her in terms of showing a boy I had a crush on him. The idea of a boy finding out I had a crush on him was so scary to me that I would never dare write a boy's name on my folder and I certainly wouldn't make a radio dedication to him. The idea of getting rejected publicly was too high of a price to pay, I thought.

Funny how kids who aren't even teenagers yet already have some sort of strategy when it comes to a crush. The radio dedication didn't work out; they never did become a couple.

I did have to look him up on the internet just now to see if by chance the two of them did end up together later in life. I was surprised to see him on a page on a social networking site. I somehow expected him to still look like that boy that she had a crush on, but he is in his 30's now and appears to be very in love with his wife and family. The girl who had such a huge crush on him never did get to know him well.