This is a (mostly) true story about how I became a Taylor Hicks fan. It was going to be a story about how I was dragged kicking and screaming into becoming a Taylor Hicks fan, but the title "How I was dragged kicking and screaming into becoming a Taylor Hicks fan" required too much typing.
It all started way back in 2005 while I was on a now defunct games Web site looking for some victims to play a game of Parchisi against. I found a room waiting for a player. As (bad) luck would have it, Steff was in the room. The game started, and Steff quickly found out what a ruthless Parchisi player I was. She had never met anyone who would bypass the entrance into home base for the sole purpose of pouncing on an opponent's playing piece (which would send that piece back to the starting spot).Steff and I quickly developed an online friendship, albeit one where we would relentlessly taunt each other while taking great pains, and pleasure, in pouncing on each other's playing pieces. As would be expected, I won most of the games (Steff's claims that she won half of the games may be true in reality, but this is my story).
Time went on, games were won and lost, and somehow Steff and I were still speaking to each other. Then Season 5 of "American Idol" began.
Ace Young was an early favorite of mine, along with Will Makar and Kevin Covais (yes, I liked Chicken Little........ now will you PLEASE stop throwing eggs at my window). Steff kept rambling on about this gray-hair guy who she thought was the hottest thing this side of Ty Pennington. I had missed seeing Taylor up to that point, so I kept an eye out for him. I figured if Steff liked him, he had to be pretty good.And then I saw Taylor for the first time.
I just could not understand what Steff saw in Taylor. Week after week, Steff would flip head over heals after seeing Taylor perform. She would bombard me constantly with her thoughts about him. When I would mention Ace, Steff would throw up.
Ouch .
I made the mistake one time of making fun of her liking Taylor while we were playing Parchisi. Steff promptly pounced on three of my playing pieces in one roll. She won the game before I could even get one of my pieces around the board. After that, I kept my Taylor comments to times when we weren't playing an online game.
In late March 2006, an opportunity for Steff to buy TheOfficialSoulPatrol.com presented itself. She not only bought the site, but somehow managed to rope me into helping her run it. Suddenly I found myself, an Ace fan, surrounded by 7,000 Soul Patrollers (we've grown some since then). Since I had not given Taylor more than an occasional glance every week up to that point, I figured it was time that I paid attention to him and his performances. After all, if I was going to argue my case for Ace, I needed to know something more about Taylor.
So I watched. Then I watched some more. And I kept watching.At some point, I found myself looking forward to seeing Taylor perform. I don't know when or how that happened, but it did. And when he performed "Play That Funky Music," I knew I was hooked.
Oops. That wasn't suppose to happen.
Not only had I become a bonafide Taylor supporter, but I had also become an avid phone voter for him. Each week I was spending the full two hours glued to the phone. I even re-installed my dial-up modem so I could download and use DialIdol, which freed me up to call from my cell phone.
Yep. I was hooked. The gray-hair guy turned out to be a talented, down-to-earth guy. He wasn't afraid to be himself on stage. I remember that time he went to kick the mike stand and missed. Twice. He didn't stop. He didn't pause. He didn't look like his world was about to fall apart. He just kept right on going, wowing the crowd in the process. Taylor was there to perform, and all I had to do to see it was just give him half a chance.
Don't get me wrong, I still love Ace. I think he is extremely talented and will have a great career if he wants it. But it turns out that Steff was right (you have no idea how painful it is for me to say that). Taylor was the best one in the group.
But don't tell Steff I said that. She'll be impossible to deal with if she finds out.
Tags: Taylor Hicks, American Idol, Birmingham, Alabama
