Frienemies with Katy Perry

Well, Rachel Hauck...you've done it this time. You've gone and gotten a blog post written JUST FOR YOU so that you can understand that yes, my love for Katy Perry IS in fact a "heart/soul connection" that goes back more than a decade...

I present to you, Katy's first ever album with a written dedication on it TO ME:

Now I know what you're thinking! How cute! How sweet! Amanda met Katy before she became way famous and now she has this wonderful little memento along with a cursed desire to watch and know and listen to all things Katy Perry!

Oh, dear Rachel. If only it were that simple...

I have often thought that if Katy and I had gone to the same high school we possibly would have been frienemies. I mean we both came from families heavily involved in ministry, and we both have hearty amounts of experience leading worship at homeless shelters and rescue missions and outdoor evangelism parties. So on those counts, we probably would have been BFFs. BUT! when it comes to boys, our fate was doomed from the beginning.

It all started when I went to a concert and found myself being squished against the stage by a bunch of raging psychos. Panicked, I remember looking with a helpless expression to the lead singer of the band, who WINKED at me. Not a lame, boring, meaningless wink. This was a wink that said, "It's okay, I've got you. You're going to be fine and then you and I are going to get married and live happily ever after."

This boy was Matt Thiessen of Relient K.

So, naturally, I left the show, thinking that my life was about to get awesome because I was going to have a rockstar boyfriend!

Wrong. It was only a few weeks later that I discovered via an old school Christian music message board that Matt had started dating Katy Hudson (now Katy Perry).

RE: she stole him from me

*insert childish girl scream here*

I did my best to move on and forgive her. I mean her music was great, and I secretly wanted to be her, but there was always this voice in the back of my head that was like "She took him him! Now you can't have him! AND SHE'S YOUNGER THAN YOU!!!!"

This was the first time that Katy and I shared a romantic interest. The second time, was way weirder...

There is a name...a very specific name that if I were to whisper it in Katy's ear, she would probably gasp and cover her mouth and then whisk me away to a quiet corner so that she could ask me how in the world I know that name...

You see, Katy's and my intertwined romantic interests didn't stop at Matt. There was this guy on a different message board (I guess there were lots of those then). And he had this MAJOR interest in Katy.

But he also had an interest in me.

And he was like 40.

Now this guy had SUCH an interest in Katy and SUCH an interest in me, that he is the reason I have the above signed album. He went to one of Katy's concerts (he went to a million of them because she was a no-name back then and did small, accessible shows), bought the CD, had her personalize it for me in such a way that it proves that he actually spent time telling her about me, and then mailed it to me along with other nice gifts and such.

Yes. This. This happened. Katy and I shared an admirer for what I can roughly estimate to be a year-year and a half.

Of course this was an admirer that neither of us wanted, but still. It totally counts and is weird.

So THERE, Rachel. THAT is my "heart/soul connection" to Katy. A strange game of 6 degrees without a single Kevin Bacon in sight.

All of this points to one truth and one truth only...if my and Katy's romances are destined to overlap, SHE IS NEVER ALLOWED TO MEET TAD BECAUSE SHE WILL STEAL HIM.

Also, it was probably a good thing that Tad stopped me from chasing that Russell Brand lookalike that we saw at the fair this summer to ask him if it was really him.

(I was just curious).