It All Started With a Monkee

"I'm sure you saw the news by now of who died."

That is how I started February 29, 2012. It sent me into a bit of a panic because I hadn't yet seen the news or anything about any celebrity death. Most of the shocking celebrity death news I receive these days is usually courtesy of Twitter, but thankfully I had not yet checked the feed before reading my best friend's FB message.

In retrospect I am glad. I am glad someone I loved gently broke the news to me rather than a glaring, shocking trending topic, because this celebrity death is one that hits me really close to home.

You really can't get any closer than your first love.

This is who Davy Jones will always be to me. It was a true star-crossed love story doomed to run a very short course. He was a celebrity, I was an elementary student, and of course we had never met except through a TV show that was rerunning ten years after it originally aired.

But my budding romanticism caught fire when I saw this cute and funny Brit who sang about the mysterious glory of starry-eyed love. Just like all the girls he made swoon on his TV show I was a goner from the very first time he opened his mouth.

He set the standard of all crushes that would follow. I wouldn't just settle for cute. I needed the whole package. I wanted someone a cut above all the rest. I wanted someone who could make me laugh as easily as he could touch my soul. I wanted someone unashamed to share cheesy, ooey gooey romantic love.



I was a true fan. One of the very first albums I owned was "More of the Monkees" and I played that vinyl treasure over and over again until I wore out every groove. I knew every word to every song and watched every episode of the Monkees with grand fascination that happens only once in a lifetime.

The first in your lifetime.



I was unaware that this band was manufactured or even past their 60s heyday. I didn't care. I was a Monkees devotee and fairly certain the day would come I'd marry a short English cutie with dark eyes and floppy hair.

Of course the late 70s gave way to the 1980s and I'd move on to other idols, quite dejected to find that my first crush was a married man in his 30s and the show was nothing more than a rerun.

But you never forget your first crush, as I've learned from all the other women I've known who share Davy with me. I can't count how many times I meet fans of other idols who confide their first celebrity crush was none other than my celebrity crush. Turns out he made several generations fall in love with him the same way he made me fall in love with him. Today we all mourn something very special in our lives. This is more than just a celebrity death... this is a significant part of our collective childhoods that means more than we could probably ever express in words. He did more than sing some songs... he made daydream believers out of all of us.

So thank you Davy for being the first. I will carry a little bit of you with me always whenever I remember what it's like to be a starry-eyed girl swooning over the boy of her dreams.