"Joining a Fan Club"

"She turned the nightlight on and blew him a kiss/He stared back through his green Crayola eyes/She traced his likeness from off the back of a disc/Next to the boxtop promise of the biggest prize."
Hero worship...we've all been there. At that certain age, music becomes an all-consuming religion. We've paid for the records, posters, magazines, so we pray, we wait for the song to come on the radio, we literally consume our heroes like little pieces of popcorn... "Shake that woody/Shake it for me Saint Pinocchio/We've paid our money, now watch that money grow."
Eventually, we move on. It's a wrench, turning our back on that piece of innocent heaven, but we're older, wiser, more sophisticated, and we don't "do" posters and hot longing glances any more. Now we're more cynical, hard-bitten, and we expect our heroes to really put out for us, not just promise it.
"Joining a fan club, big mistake/I still get heartburn when I think about all of the stamps I ate/I wished I'd loved him before fate crashed his car/Say a prayer for the fallen star."
But it's still a piece of innocent pleasure to pull out that old record, see that faded, much-thumbed cover and remember how our entire life revolved around it for such a long time, such a long time ago.