I consider myself a recovering Jonas Brother fan because to say I’m a former fan would mean I don’t like them anymore and that is a flat out lie. I just went to Nick Jonas’ concert in Orlando last month. I knew all of his new songs because my love for him will last until the end of time.
I was a mega fan girl before the days of Beliebers and One Directioners. We didn’t have Twitter giveaways or Snapchat connections. We stalked the old fashion way – through extensive searching of paparazzi pictures and hours of poring over every teen magazine the Jonas Brothers appeared in.
Before you start judging me hardcore, you should know that I’m definitely not as obsessed as I used to be – and when I say I was obsessed, I mean the actual definition. “To preoccupy or fill the mind of (someone) continually, intrusively, and to a troubling extent.” Yep, that’s accurate.
It is pretty troubling looking back on it. I spent hundreds of dollars (read: my wonderful mom dished out hundreds of dollars) to go to seven – yes, SEVEN – Jonas Brothers concerts throughout my short lifetime. I spent hours on fan sites and an incomprehensible amount of time trying to figure out how to get Nick to fall in love with me. I remarkably grew up to be a fairly normal and functioning member of society.
I first became a fan in the fifth grade because every girl in my grade was listening to them and when you’re a chubby 11-year-old girl with frizzy hair, you just want to do what the cool girls are doing. As we got older, the weaklings dropped out of the fan-girl game while my friends and I soldiered on. We then became known as the weirdly obsessed fanatics.
I am the first to admit that the majority of the things we did in the name of love for these three boys are beyond embarrassing. So obviously I’m going to list them out for the entire Internet to read. (Please note this is not a comprehensive list because you’d be reading this article for hours if it was.)
- I made my mom drive my friends and I to the Amway Arena (#tbt to the days before that bougie Amway Center Orlando is blessed with now) at 6 a.m. and wait in an insane line for four hours just to get nosebleed tickets. Turns out we could’ve stayed home and gotten better tickets online. Sorry, Mom.
- My best friend and I asked our eighth grade teacher if we could hang posters in our classroom because it was “National Jonas Brothers Day.” She, for some reason, let us and all my posters were ruined because people drew mustaches on them. It’s okay though, I still had the buttons I wore on my backpack every day.
- I waited at Downtown Disney’s movie theater for three hours after the “Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience” movie because the staff thought it’d be funny to tell me that the actual Jonas Brothers were going to show up at the theater and I believed them.
- I waited in 100-degree heat for seven hours to see them perform on the Ellen show when she came to Orlando. Four girls fainted and had to get medical attention.
- I cried at every…single…concert.
- And I can’t even calculate how much time I spent waiting after every concert just to get a glimpse of them in their tour bus.
While I grew out of my fanatic phase junior and senior year of high school, I still struggled with the fact that after all the time, energy, money and dignity I spent on them, I never actually met the Jonas Brothers or really ever saw them up close. (I met Kevin in eighth grade, but that barely counts because everyone knows he’s the least favorite/hottest.)
Then, a miracle happened this past summer. I was up in New York City visiting my childhood best friends, who were with me on my journey of super fandom so many years back. We were walking down the street and passed by a restaurant that’s frequented by celebrities. Right before we passed it, my one friend mentioned that she’d seen Harry Styles there a couple weeks back. So we’re walking by this restaurant and an incredibly attractive man catches my eye. Then I realize he’s sitting across from an equally as attractive man. Then I realize IT’S GOD BLESSED NICK AND JOE JONAS. Wow, was 12-year-old me (and 21-year-old me) excited. I pushed my friends around the corner and we all collectively let out a scream that, if heard in Gainesville, would warrant a UF Alert. Obviously, we walked around the block and passed them again because I waited over a decade for this to happen and I wasn’t going to pass up a double take. It was also pretty jazzy that they were eating lunch with Gigi Hadid and Kendall Jenner.
At this point, you’re wondering if I’ve thought about getting psychological help. I probably should have, but if I have one thing to say about my time as a fan girl, I’ll say that it takes guts. Sure, my friends and I got made fun of, but it prepared me for the awful four years of hell also known as high school. It gave me a tough skin and I’m pretty thankful for that.
So my fellow comrades, my point here is that you should embrace your childhood weirdo because it’s what helped shape you into the adult weirdo you are today. I want to say I’m ashamed of my days as a crazy fan girl, but I’m not. If anything, I think it shows how dedicated I can get to something if I really put my mind to it. Remind me to add that to my cover letter later.
