Step by Step by New Kids on the Block

Throughout my childhood and into adulthood, I rarely missed a summer camping trip to Silver Lake.  We would typically spend an entire week camping in tents with no showers and pit toilets.  I should also point out that it was typically all girls...and Matt M.  It should come as no surprise that most of the time, the girls were all hanging out together at the campsite or the lake or the potholes, whereas Matt had disappeared before the sun came up and there was nary a sight of him until dinner.  There were also days where we assumed he was off hiking and exploring, but he was actually asleep in his tent. 

It wasn't always all girls.  There was the (hard)core group of the two families, but each year usually included various guests such as friends, family members, boyfriends, or girlfriends.  No matter the company, it was always a lot of fun.  Today were are going back to the early 90's and I seem to remember it being a very quiet group.  Or perhaps it was just the beginning of a trip and we were waiting on other campers to arrive.  For whatever reason, I remember it being just me, my Mom, Phyllis M. and her son Matt.  I definitely remember playing New Kids on the Block cassettes all the way to the lake.  My mom was very understanding and patient, gotta love her.  I was obsessed with the New Kids, to put it mildly.  No really. Obsessed is the mildest way to say it.  I would play the tapes straight through and I never fast forwarded a song because I felt like it would be disloyal.  I was absolutely required to listen to and appreciate every last song.  I also never left a tape unplayed or stopped in the middle of it if I could help it - I always played them all the way through.  Ridiculous! 

I had this ginormous button of Joe and I wore it on my jean jacket.  Matt made fun of me because, of course.  He also made fun of the New Kids and that was clearly more offensive.  He redeemed himself though because the first night as we were all going to sleep, I called out:  Good night Matthew-a-poo-poo (a nickname invented by my sister).  And Matt responded:  Don't You Know I Hate You (a revision on a line from Step by Step).  So of course I responded:  Don't You Know You're Stupid!  This went on for some time, but the point is that Matt obviously knew the song, he knew the tune of the song.  He had obviously heard or even listened to it at some point.  The Kids were ubiquitous at the time, BUT STILL.  I remember thinking that this was the nicest thing Matt had ever said to me.  I was younger than Matt and I usually annoyed him and he teased me or generally avoided me, but this time, he was "talking to me" and it was about THE NEW KIDS!!!  By the next summer, I was onto something new and there were no more New Kids Nighttime Serenades.