I guess I could have seen this coming. Ever since I was a teeny bopper rocking my New Kids on the Block T-shirts, I've noticed that I have a slightly obsessive personality.
When I was younger, the New Kids ruled my life. Shirts, dolls, cassette tapes, pins, sheets, sleeping bag, posters ... I had it all. You could say I was slightly obsessed, but I was 10. It was completely normal behavior.
Fast forward about 10 years. Replace New Kids on the Block with N*Sync. Now, I wasn't going to sleep with a Justin Timberlake doll, but I did have posters, and I did call a radio station over and over trying to win concert tickets. Which I did. Then there also was the time that I was waiting at Walmart at 11:55 p.m. to get their CD that was released at midnight.
Take one more trip in time to the present day. More specifically this past Sunday night. Now, when I get out of the Tribune, say around 1 a.m., I usually head straight home, catch a rerun of "Law & Order," and hit the sack.
But this night, I was feeling a little down on myself. I needed a girls night. So I made a trip through the Taco Bell drive through and went to Walmart to purchase the newly released DVD "New Moon."
That's right, my new Justin Timberlake is Edward Cullen.
The only problem with my new obsession - I feel like a dirty old lady deciding between Team Edward and Team Jacob.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, in the "Twilight" series, Bella (the main female character) and Edward (a vampire) are very much in love. However, Jacob (a werewolf, which are the mortal enemies of vampires) is challenging Edward for Bella's affections. It's much more complicated than that, but that sums it up in a nutshell.
The books were downright addicting. I was a little late getting into them, but once I read "Twilight" in a span of 10 hours, then "New Moon" in a day, it was over.
Though I don't think "Twilight" was the best-made movie in the history of cinema, it still hooked me in. From that point on, I wished that one day, I could find my own Edward Cullen. To have a man love me unconditionally, though the elements say it's wrong. I could do without the whole vampire thing though.
However, in the second movie, "New Moon," Jacob got, well, hot. Insanely, make-grown-women-forget-how-to-speak, 24-pack abs, hot. I've always been an Edward fan, but it's hard to not become a part of Team Jacob when he takes his shirt off.
Here's the problem. The actor who plays Jacob, Taylor Lautner, just turned 18 years old. Yeah, I'm officially a dirty old lady. But I know for a fact that I'm not the only Team Jacob cougar walking about the streets of Trumbull County.
This is wrong. I can't believe I'm even writing this column! I guarantee 20 years ago, my mom was not looking at Joey McIntyre and trying to push aside the fact that when she took me to see NKOTB at the Struthers Fieldhouse that he didn't even have his driver's license yet.
I'm glad I don't have children. I can't imagine fighting my 8-year old at the dinner table over Team Edward and Team Jacob. The fact I fight my dance students about it on a daily basis is bad enough.
But now that I have "New Moon," purchased and in the comforts of my DVD player, I can obsess over Edward and Jacob all I want, with no one judging me.