Like The Wind

I tried not to, but I couldn't NOT blog about the sadness that struck the world last night with the loss of Patrick Swayze. I found out about it this morning reading Fox News and I must say that it put a damper on my Chai Tea Latte from Starbucks.

'Ole Patrick and I go way back, you see. He was the love of my life when I was the tender age of 5 and my semi-irresponsible babysitter let me view Dirty Dancing. That movie was my first exposure to the saga of Johnny Castle and Baby Haussmen and their love affair. Luckily, it wasn't until years later that I learned that the movie dealt a lot more with bad 80's costuming choices, promiscuous behavior, and abortions than true love, but with a soundtrack like that and Patrick Swayze's fantastic dance moves during the finale, all the bad seemed to overshadowed to the catchy beat of "Hungry Eyes."

After seeing that movie, I somehow talked my mom into buying me a poster of Patrick Swayze to hang on the wall of my playroom. As I recall, it depicted Patrick in a pair of overalls with no shirt underneath. Classy, no, but I was in love. My mom and I laughed about that today, as a matter of fact. I asked her why she thought it would be okay to buy her kindergarten aged daughter a poster of a 36 year old man and she saucily informed me that that poster was just as much for her as it was for me. Twenty one years later, the truth comes out.

Patrick Swayze - still bringing families together, one merengue at a time.