How Menudo Influenced Me...

The boy on the far right (Ricky Melendez), was my first love. I grew up in Big Lake and Becker where diversity(regarding other languages, cultures and skin color),was pretty non-existent. Everyone was white. Somehow my friend Angie and I stumbled upon an all boy band from Puerto Rico named Menudo. This is the boy band that Ricky Martin was in when he was younger. Ricky Melendez was, for some reason, my favorite member. We would go nuts over any television or radio appearance they made and would buy every issue of "Bop and Teen" magazines in order to clip photos of them for our Menudo scrap books. One time we even put make-up on and dressed up. We took photos of ourselves and wrote them letters. We were sure that they would see the pictures, read our letters and come to Minnesota to scoop us up and be our boyfriends. Awwweeeee to be young and clueless again. Looking at this band now, they were extremely geeky by today's standards, but they were as macho as could be at my age in the early 80's. The band still exisst and are much more modern looking. I'll take the vintage Menudo any day though because they bring back many fond memories. The reason I am mentioning this band is because I credit them for sparking my interest in and respect for other languages and cultures. I started taking Spanish because of them (after all, I would need it when Ricky asked me to marry him-lol). When I was a senior in high school I dated the exchange student from Nogales, Mexico because he reminded me of Ricky. As a freshman at St. Cloud State University, the first group I joined was the International Student's Association. I met people from Pakistan, India, Palestine, Japan, China, South American, you name it. I learned so much from them and I loved it. To me, my culture, or lack thereof as Dyer would put it, was so blaze'. When I met my husband (he trained me in at QVC), it was mutual love at first sight. That was in 1988. We were married in 1991 and have been very happy together ever since. We now have three children together. He is from south Yemen and grew up in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I really do believe that Menudo has a lot to do with the fact that when I saw my husband, there was an immediate interest. That attraction to different cultures has been within me ever since and I still think that culture in our white society is boring. That is just my opinion though, so no offense to my white brothers and sisters. LOL. Is there a grand narrative here? For me, I guess so. Luckily, thus far, it has a "happy ending." By the way Ricky Melendez is married with children now and living in Puerto Rico practicing real estate law.I think if I met him today I would still turn to jelly. LOL. Adios!