There was a brief interlude between third and fourth grade where my parents made the decision to throw me into public school. With both my sisters in college by now, my mom could no longer afford to stay at home, and so we decided to send me to the elementary school down the street starting in fourth grade. It’d be perfect, since my little brother would start kindergarten at the same school, and we’d be in the same school for four years, since this specific school was K-8.
Ahead of the big switch, my parents decided to reintegrate me with the socialization aspect of public school, and conveniently for all involved, my aunt was able to pull some strings and fast track my enrollment at the public school where she was a principal. So, for the final eight weeks of third grade, I was a student at a small little elementary school in El Paso’s Lower Valley. Once again a year younger than everyone else, I’m sure I was nervous about starting back at a normal school. But after the weird encounters with the kids from Bible study, I don’t remember feeling any one particular way about restarting traditional school.
Starting at the school, I remember that the entire mood was different compared to private school. All the kids in my class were so kind and welcoming to me; they seemed to be excited to meet someone new, and I’m sure that I hadn’t yet lost my own excitement to have friends. It was a match made in heaven, really. My teacher was incredibly sweet and made sure to check up on my progress often, ensuring that I wasn’t just integrating well socially, but also meeting all my milestones for standardized tests. Both of those areas were successes.
For those eight weeks, I was just a normal kid. Sure, there were some roadblocks, but nothing - nothing - like what happened before in private school, or in Bible study, for that matter. I did homework, finished projects, participated in class, and started making friends. Obviously, that short window of time where I was enrolled wasn’t long enough to form any lasting connections, but a part of me had hoped it would be.
There are a few moments from the tail end of this time that stick in my head. One is when we had a field day celebration to mark the end of the year and to let off steam after testing season concluded. Down the road from the school, there was an old private school with a huge courtyard and lawn. That day, our school had partnered with them to rent a bunch of inflatables and set up different activities for us to do all day. That was an absolute BLAST, and even though I can’t recall the specifics, like who I was with and what all we did, I remember that I was part of a group who were trying to do everything twice, at the very least. For a few fleeting moments, it felt awkward, and I recall that I wasn’t perfectly enmeshed with the group, but I’d at least gotten that far. At least for a single day, I was surrounded by people who enjoyed having me around and weren’t looking for the worst.
The other moment that sticks in my head actually had very little bearing on myself as a kid, but was one of the very first connections I formed to my past self later on. It’s as if I was in Portal, and eight year old Nick opened up a portal for 19 year old Nick to catch this in the future. That same week as field day, we had some activities on our school campus; one of those was some kind of roller skating activity, led by some older people. Come to think of it, it was probably a D.A.R.E. event or something, but regardless, people were on skates. Thankfully, I didn’t partake, rather I just spectated along with a boy whom I’d befriended. We watched under the hot sun of 2003’s nascent summer, and listened to the crowd yell over the drone of music. Wait. Music. What was that song?
We asked ourselves that question all the way back to our classroom, and we both agreed it banged, or whatever the equivalent slang was. Later on, I asked my cousin - who was staying with us while her mom, my aunt, was out of town - if she could identify it based on the little bit of the chorus I could remember. Of course, what I recalled was just specific enough to bring something to mind, but not specific enough to be identifiable. With seemingly the most knowledgable person stumped, I just tucked the chanting chorus and power chords into my head.
I don’t know why that little moment was frozen in time in my head for so long, or why I was able to remember exactly how it sounded, or why it felt important despite being a 30 second glimpse at a day 11 years in the past, but when I was 19, I thought of that moment, one night at home. YouTube’s algorithm is pretty unanimously deserving of the guillotine, but for this, it’s earned my pardon; while listening to music, it recommended me a song that autoplayed. Immediately, I perked up, because it was scratching an itch I couldn’t yet identify.
Then, the chorus hit:
Let’s go, don’t wait
This night’s almost over
Honest, let’s make
This night last forever,
And ever, and ever
Let’s make this last forever
And ever, and ever.
You could’ve hit me in the face with the Holy Grail and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and it still would’ve paled in comparison to the adrenaline rush I got from finally realizing that “First Date” by blink-182 was the song that had been stuck in my head like a gangrenous splinter for 11 years.
The relief I felt from getting answer to a question I forgot I asked took me aback. At first, I thought it was just a coincidence of fate, a data-driven hint that I’d always liked shitty early-00s teen movie soundtrack music. And, while that might be true, it didn’t explain the total euphoria of that moment, because why on earth should it have been that song?
At that point in 2004, “First Date” wasn’t even a single off of the newest blink-182 album. The other singles from that preceding album - “What’s My Age Again?,” “All the Small Things,” and “Adam’s Song” - all were bigger hits, why not remember one of those? Why not remember a different contemporary like Yellowcard’s “Ocean Avenue,” or “The Reason” by Hoobastank? Why don’t I shut my trap and stop pulling out songs from the dregs of my iTunes Library? Because I don’t know shame; I don’t know it now and I didn’t know it then.
“First Date” is a song about having an amazing time with someone, probably more obviously than any other blink-182 song, aside from “The Rock Show.” At the moment I heard that song, I was toward the end of a temporary school year that I knew wouldn’t last, but I was happy. I was excited. I was with someone I cared for, and who cared for me. I remember, it was just the two of us who stuck together to watch the skaters. In fact, I remember that he was probably my closest friend.
Is it really a stretch that he might have been more than a friend? Is it a stretch to think that the exuberance of Tom Delonge’s singing was awakening something inside me? That feeling that I had been meant to feel before, with Carrie from Bible study? I don’t think so.
Somewhere in my mother’s house, I know there’s a little construction paper yearbook for my time at the school in the Lower Valley. On the last day, I remember getting everyone to sign it, and tearfully saying goodbye to my new old friends. When my aunt collects me and took me home, I think I knew how unlikely it would be that I’d ever see any of them again, but I know I’d at least have that small collection of memories. A small and fragile keepsake that’s survived all this time. It fits.