If Polly Saw Darren Criss 15 Years Ago

Polly's music taste is eclectic, but she has her faves. She likes Rage Against the Machine, Dinosaur Jr., Janes Addiction, Nirvana, Van Halen, PJ Harvey and some hard core metal bands I can't even stomach.

Really, she's kind of a bad ass. In a recent speech I heard her quote one of the Rage songs: "Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me." I'm pretty sure she also did that rocker sign that, to me, just looks like "I love you" in ASL.

Here's a few of the 1,000+ ways we're different:

I danced to the Sundays at First Avenue. Polly made out to various big-hair bands with her guitar-playin' rocker boyfriend in his basement.

I sat in the grass and listened to Sinead O'Connor. Polly was body-passed through the mosh pit at Lollapalooza.

I spent weeks trying to get Prince tickets. Polly drove all night to peek through the window at one of Pearl Jam's gigs at a bar in Madison.

I blast NPR. Polly blasts Radiohead.

Still, she's an incurable romantic, my girl. (And kind of cheesy.) When we were first dating, she would turn up Mariah Carey's top-40 gem, "Always Be My Baby" and smile shyly at me, slipping her hand in mine. Our love has always been five parts superhot awesomeness and two parts pure old-fashioned lovestruck awesomeness.

Today I saw this video of Darren Criss performing in London and it reminded me of Polly, like, 15 years ago. Well before that fateful night when the world stopped making sense without her, I knew she had a massive crush on me. I knew she was pining for me. I knew she knew I was the kind of girl who "only wants to mess around." And I knew she'd wait. So when I saw the uber-talented Darren Criss sing this it reminded me of Polly. It's kind of like her theme song, circa 1996.

And like us, Darren's rendition of "One Fine Day" is five parts superhot awesomeness and two parts pure old-fashioned lovestruck awesomeness. It's Polly's determined longing. It's cheese and goodness and promise and perfection. So despite her love of hard-core music, I know she would have loved this. She would never have sung the song to me, no. That's not her style. But it definitely would have gone on a mix tape with my name on it.

(And for the record, if she had managed to sing this to me a la Darren Criss, I would have said yes a hell of a lot earlier than I did.)

Thanks for the memories, Darren.