About a month ago, I did something that I've only told to a few people.
About a month ago, I went to the New Kids On The Block/Backstreet Boys reunion concert in Atlanta...willingly.
Originally I decided to go just so I could finally see a live BSB show, since I never got the chance to see any boy bands in concert when "Larger Than Life" dominated the airwaves.
Back in the day my heart belonged to 'NSYNC, but since they aren't getting back together anytime soon, I immediately jumped at the chance.
It was only after I'd decided to go that I started wondering if I had finally lost my mind.
I will be the first to admit that I'm a huge dork at heart, but this crossed the line even by my own lofty standards of dorkdom.
Not only did it cross the line, it crooned and danced in synchronization the entire time.
Regardless, I found myself in the Philips arena that Wednesday night mentally shaking my head and wondering what in the world was I thinking.
As I expected, about 90 percent of the crowd was female, and a good majority of them were older than 30.
I saw women who had dragged their significant others along, who were in turn dragging their feet.
I got the impression that most of them were there as a favor to their partner and were secretly wondering how many times they could hit up the Jack Daniels bar in the food court before they found the evening tolerable.
After slowly nudging my way forward through the estrogen-packed crowd, I made my way to my seat and settled in for the show.
By the time the lights grew dim and the female-dominated audience began to shriek, I had braced myself for the ear-splitting cacophony that was soon to come.
What I wasn't prepared for, oddly enough, was the rush of nostalgia.
From the opening number to the finale, I stopped being 22.
For those few hours I felt like I was 10 years old again, blasting the Millennium album from my old blue CD player and imagining that they were singing it just for me.
It had been years since I had heard many of these songs, but I was amazed to find that I still remembered every word.
Surprisingly, the Boys were far more modest than the Kids, who wasted no opportunity to show they were still perfectly bronze and muscular after all these years.
When Joey McIntyre slowly slid his shirt up over his washboard abs and winked at the crowd during their first song, I witnessed twenty-somethings and mothers become squealing teenage girls again.
Later when Donnie Wahlberg ripped off his tank top like a seductive, miniature version of the Hulk and tossed it into the audience, I briefly lost my hearing because of the deafening screams that echoed from every corner of the arena.
That's not to say that the Boys let themselves be shown up.
They may have opted to keep their clothes on, but they clearly have not lost their ability to croon soulfully to every female in the room with a smolder in their eyes.
I'll even admit that I felt a slight twinge of jealousy when they pulled women from the audience up on stage and crooned "I'll Never Break Your Heart" directly to them.
Throughout the rest of the concert, I found myself glancing around at the people in the audience.
Whatever they struggled with at this point in their lives seemed to vanish as they, like me, allowed themselves to be carried back to younger days before they had to contend with grown-up worries.
It's funny how music has the ability to evoke such strong feelings of nostalgia and seemingly melt years away.
I couldn't help but feel a strange sense of camaraderie with these women, despite our age gaps and different backgrounds.
It was almost like we all became a bunch of lovestruck little girls at a slumber party, spazzing out over our old celebrity crushes.
So, does going to the NKOTBSB concert and completely enjoying myself make me a huge dork? Maybe.
Truth be told I really don't mind, and I actually think I want it that way.
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