Danny Wood Is Following Me!

I signed up to twitter in 2011. Didn't really used it- didn't know what to do with it. Until this spring when I heard that the NKOTB is reunited for couple of years already. I have always been a late bloomer.

From spring to autumn, after 300 tweets, I have Danny Wood following me! My follow #12, his follow #1756. Like numbers matter.

Anyway, lets go back to the story of how or why Danny decided to follow me. I like to think he read my blog http://nkotb-poster.blogspot.com. It is more likely that I sent the message at the right time and without over-thinking it, he probably just pressed "follow". A little act of kindness that kept me awake all night.

I was struggling with extreme emotions- pain and happiness. The happiness part is easier to explain. Every NKOTB fan of more than 20 years would be thrilled to have one of the guys follow them. You think, they will read your tweets and see how clever and funny you are. They would want to meet you! You are so cool. You are special!

The pain part- that one is not easy to explain. My dream about meeting the NKOTB started in my first life. If you wonder how someone, who is not a cat, has more than one life, let me clarify. I live in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Once upon time, there was a war in Bosnia and Sarajevo was under the siege.
So, I had a life before the war and I have a life after the war. About the life during the war we rarely talk- because it was not really a life..it was a gateway to death.

Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo, 1984

Life in Sarajevo before the war was no different than life in other East European cities. Maybe better. You lived in one-party system, everyone had more-less the same (of everything).  By the time I grew up to be a teenager, just after the fall of the Berlin wall, things started changing in my country too. I still remember going every Tuesday to a little shop downtown spending my weekly allowance for the German BRAVO magazine. I didn't speak German, but the photos and poster of the NKOTB spoke plenty to me.

Sarajevo 1992-1996

I was 14 when the war started in Bosnia. I was 18 when the war ended. I didn't even realize the war is starting, because that year, my mom finally allowed me to hang the NKOTB poster on the wall of my room! So, if the world was about to disappear, I could not care less. I had the NKOTB poster hanging in my room (at last!) and I could not stop looking at it. Who would have thought that that poster was going to be my life line in the years to follow..
Being in the war makes you life very simple. You only have one worry, one goal, one concern, one thought- staying alive! No matter what.  But, even in the war, you are not spared of teen hormones. You feel everything more intensely. Every death you witness takes a piece of you. And you witness them a lot. But, your teen spirit, your burned Icarus does not give up. It finds something to hold on to, to blow wind in your broken wings, so that you can fly again one day. If you make it through.
I do not have that poster anymore. It did not survive 4 years of war and numerous refugees that resided in my room.

In my life after the war, I have a promise to fulfill. The promise I made myself in the darkest of nights -If I live I am going to meet them and nothing will stop me. I lived through the war, but I still haven't met them. Lots of things got in the way- they broke apart and that stopped me. I needed visa to travel to 163 countries in the world, including the USA- and that stopped me. Let's be realistic- I live in the country with 40% of unemployment rate- and that stopped me. The cost of me going to the NKOTB cruise equals average annual salary in Bosnia- and that stopped me.

But, having them follow me..nothing can stop that. Thank you Danny!

This will be me in another 30yrs talking about NKOTB to my BFF