Johnny Castle was my first honest to goodness crush. I was 8 years old and a girl in my neighborhood had a video copy of Dirty Dancing. Based on the title alone, I knew my parents would never let me watch it at home, so I took every opportunity I could get to watch it at her house.

I was young and naive enough to not understand all the adult themes in the movie… but Patrick Swayze with his bad boy ways, dance moves, and pouty lips were enough to make the 8 year old me sit up and take notice. I spent the rest of the summer wearing keds with no socks and practicing my interpretation of the rumba down the dirt road I grew up on.

In high school, I convinced my boyfriend to learn to lift me up over his head in that classic end of movie scene, where baby is balancing arms and legs gracefully over Johnny’s head. We must of tried it 30 times before we got it right, but eventually we did.

My freshman year of college, the Dirty Dancing sound track got me through a rough semester of gaining so much weight that nothing but my school issued sweat pants fit and an over dramatic break-up with my first college boyfriend.

And even as a full-fledged adult with a career and a husband, I’d discover Johnny Castle waiting for me on Saturday afternoon tv, his black tank top and swiveling hips taking me back to those carefree days of my childhood and I’d get sucked in all over again. (Here are a few of my other Dirty Dancing related posts)

I had my fair share of crushes over the years - some of them famous (I sent Macaulay Culkin a 3 page letter after watching My Girl for the first time) and some of them not so famous (like the boy who played drums in the middle school band and invited me to a Black Crows concert when I was 12) but none of them could hold a candle to Johnny Castle…. my very first crush… the one and only Patrick Swayze.

Rest in peace.

M