Hello?

I was telling someone from the label about my feelings for Lionel Richie, how they've surged over the last three months since seeing him twice in Nashville. "I was never not a fan but now I think I LOVE him," I said, "I can't even believe how excited I was to see him sing at the Ryman. I totally fanned out." "I know," she said, "I feel the same way. He seems like the nicest person."

"This is how he smiled when I saw him at the hotel," I said and stood from the chair I'd been slumped in. I walked past her but kept my eyes locked on hers the whole time, a huge smile plastered from ear to ear. "It looked genuine, too."

"Do you remember the video for Hello from the eighties?" I asked. "That's what I keep thinking of. That's Lionel Richie to me."

What makes me laugh about Hello the video from 1984 is the suspension of disbelief, that Lionel as teacher can sing his love for his blind student right there in the middle of class or the school hallway and no one gives a dang. He paces and broods and creeps around and makes silent prank calls to his student's home while she reads braille in bed WHEN HE'S NOT SINGING IN EVERYONE'S FACE ABOUT IT LIKE A CRAZY MAN. And he has the same exact hair as the object of his affection. Her bangs-on-mullet are slightly longer, that's it. The saving grace is that she loves him back and sculpts his likeness in clay, her blindness notwithstanding. Without this sculpture he'd be just a horny love-struck teacher on the verge of getting cited by the administration.

Also, it's been 18 years and his hair overall is shorter but his mustache is exactly the same as it is on the album cover that I got in the mail today.

"Hello? Is it me you're looking fo-or?"