Tearin' Up My Heart

I learned the dance

From ‘Tearin’ Up My Heart’

With four other kids

On my bus

We were always the last four

To get dropped off

And there was a good ten minutes

Between the second-to-last stop

And our stop

So we had a decent amount of time

To devote to choreography

Like pretty much everything else

That happened in junior high

I have no idea

How this all came about

I just remember one day

The five of us

Were in the back of the bus

And ‘Tearin’ Up My Heart’ came on

And one of us said ‘I know how to do this move’

And another one said ‘I know that move AND this move’
And the next thing you know

We were assigning parts

And learning harmonies

If the bus driver cared

She never said anything

As we were attempting to recreate

A full-blown music video

In the back of a swiftly moving school bus

Fun Fact--

If you can dance like N’Sync

In the back of a moving bus
You can dance just about anywhere

To this day

I bust out those moves

At a wedding

And people stare at me

Like I’m shooting fire

Out of my eyes

It’s just muscle memory

Although my actual memory

Is shot to shit

I couldn’t even tell you

The names of those other four kids

Although I remember that one of them

Was on the hockey team

With my older brother

And another one had this weird ear

That we never talked about

As soon as the bus

Pulled up to our stop

We would just get off

And it would be like

The whole thing--

The whole learning-the-dance thing

Never happened

Like we were in training

For some secret mission

And the bus was the secured training room

Or something

As soon as we stepped off it

We just walked quietly

To our respective houses

And, honestly, I don’t think I ever listened

To N’Sync at any other point aside from that

I was more of a Limp Bizkit guy

And that probably tells you
Everything you need to know

About me as a thirteen-year-old

Sometime before Christmas break

My dad started picking me up from school more

So we could go visit my mom in the hospital

And then it just became this regular thing

Even when she got sent home

So I never took the bus again

I don’t know if the four other kids

Kept up with their choreography

And we didn’t see each other in school that much

Aside from passing in the hallways and whatnot

The only reason I’m even telling you this story

Is because it connects to this way better story

About how this one time--

Shit, you are never going to believe this

But I swear, it’s for real

--This one time I was at one of those weddings I was talking about

And ‘Tearin’ Up My Heart Comes On’

And I walk to the dance floor

Ready to wow the crowd

With the memory of my muscles

And I look around

And realize

There are four other people

All standing on the dance floor

Who look just like me

Like, not like me,

But ready, like I am

Like in a sort of stance

And, like, I don’t know for sure

But I’m pretty confident

It was the four kids I was on that bus with

All those years ago

We were all about the same age

One kid had a weird ear

Another one looked like that hockey player

I know it sounds impossible

But then the music started

And the five of us

All did the dance

Perfectly

And, like

People went nuts

They
Went

Nuts

It was so awesome

I think somebody filmed it

But I’ve never seen it posted anywhere so--

Right after that

They played another song

Which is kind of what they do at weddings

But, man

That moment

That one moment

It was…

It was like I had been waiting for that

My whole life