Artist: Celine Dion
Title: Petit Papa Noel
Lyrics:
C'est la belle nuit de Noël
La neige étend son manteau blanc
Et les yeux levés vers le ciel
Why?:
When I was in grade 7, our French teacher decided we needed some culture and made us listen to Celine Dion before Celine Dion made it big and started singing in English. In true hipster fashion, I can tell you thanks to Mr. Harris, I knew about Celine before Titanic.
For the record, I don't recall if this was one of the songs he made us listen to by her, but he did play a version of this song. It stuck in my head and I actually quite like the song. It's cute and is mean to be super sentimental.
A lot of things happened to me when I was in grade 7 (read: I discovered boys!). So this song is exceptionally good at laying on the nostalgia super thick for me.
I remember this really nice, cute blond guy who I had a crush on since grade 4 and he knew it. He ended up going out with my best friend at the time. I wasn't really mad. He made it clear he wasn't into me, but he liked me fine as a friend. In fact, most of the boys I liked in school made it pretty clear they weren't into me. I remember one boy told me it was because I was so weird. I shrugged it off outwardly at the time (inside, it hurt, but I'm not here to make anyone go, 'Awww' and feel sorry for me today. I'll save my tearjerkers for later). But if you couldn't handle me at my subtle weirdness, you certainly weren't going to handle me at all with the weirdness cranked to eleven.
Ultimately, of all the guys I wanted to date, he was the one who let me down gently, by staying my friend and treating me no differently than he did before. We stayed friends up until he passed away two years ago. He was a super sweet guy and a great father. I see updates about his kids on his Facebook page occasionally and I know he'd be happy and proud of them. He was only a year older than me.
This is the time of year that has my mind going back to things long forgotten (or put aside because I didn't want to deal with feelings at that time). My friend is not long forgotten by any means, but some of my intense feelings for him have become a distant memory. I hadn't thought about him as being the subject of my childhood crush in many years. When he passed away I didn't have a chance to attend his memorial, so I never really got to share any of my personal memories of him with anyone else. I'm not sure why this song reminded me of him the other day when I found this song again after many years. He wasn't very good at French. Perhaps it may have been because he was forced to play Santa Claus at school once because he was the biggest guy in class. Memory is a weird thing.
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