Happy Chaos (25 page)

As you know by now, I'm a big believer in open communication in a family. It really affects every area of our lives as parents. We want our kids to feel that they can tell us anything—and that they can ask us anything. But that doesn't happen overnight—you have to work on it every day. Our lives are so busy that sometimes we really have to make a point of talking to each other and truly listening. Make sure your kids know that you always want them to come to you with questions. I say to my kids all the time that there are no stupid questions, and I think it is important to continue bringing that up. If they don't learn things from home, they will pick it up somewhere else. So it's better that they have an accurate understanding from you than to get misinformation.

Question of the day: Who was your first love, and how old were you?

“My best friend growing up, Steve. We were 11. I never told him though. He was too good of a friend, and I was scared.”

—AnaLiesa

“As a very young child (4-5 years old) I was in love with two Turkish twins who were in my school! I imagined I would fly away to their country with them (both!) on a helicopter with their mommy on board . . .”

—Amelie

“My first love was a guy named Joe and I was 13. He was my best friend and we were together for 2 years. I still miss him to this day.”

—Lisa M.

“When I was in 6th grade—I finally went on a real date with him when I was 15 and he was having an acid trip the whole time. I demanded to be taken home and that crush was OVER!”

—Jessica

“My first love was Mike at the age of 17. He was gorgeous, sweet, and it didn't last as long as I wished it would.”

—Sherill

 

I
t is hard to talk about my love of boys without a time line because I really was that boy-crazy. For as far back as I can remember, I always loved boys. Even before I could talk, my big brother's friends would come over to visit and give me bear hugs or tickle me as I turned beet red with shyness. I loved the attention. By the time I was five, I was pretending Danny Masterson was my boyfriend. He was my best friend, and we would do sleepovers on a regular basis. I even went to New York to stay with his family and I slept on the lower bunk of his trundle bed. I still remember those adorable little boy blankets, all blue and snuggly, while my best buddy/future husband slept above me. To this day he is still one of my closest friends. My husband and he are close as well. Funny how things turn out.

By the time I was about six, I really fell in love. It was Valentine's Day, or maybe we were just cutting heart-shaped cards, but there I sat in the trailer that the kids would hang out in on our set school of
Little Shots
when he walked in. His name was Joey Lawrence, and he had the hottest bowl cut I had ever seen. It kind of moved all at once when he walked up the stairs into the room. He had this smile and his eyes sparkled. I think I may have heard birds chirping that day. He smiled; I smiled back. That young love would last for years off and on. And as fate would have it, I did
Punky Brewster
at the same time he was on
Gimme a Break!

Lucky for me, in the eighties every show on NBC was like a family, and for every NBC special all the shows would come together to perform. Whether it was singing beside Nell Carter and Don Johnson, or dancing beside Betty White and Michael J. Fox, our paths all inevitably crossed. I would bump into Joan Collins while someone put on my ChapStick backstage, or get a big hug from one of the cast members from
The Facts of Life
. When I say it was like a family at NBC, I really mean it. But back to my love of boys . . .

Here I am with the Lawrences and Tori at Venice Beach, way back in the day

 

Joey and I would cross paths over the years. Our families became very close, and the next thing we knew, we were off to Finland to film
The Andy Williams Christmas Special
together with about a dozen other kids, listening to Wham! By the time I turned eight, I considered him my full-on boyfriend. I will never forget the glorious night when we were both at the opening of
Captain Eo
at Disneyland. It was on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride when I lay my head gently against his bowl cut that I fell in love for the first time. Throughout those years we stayed friends. We would run through the Beverly Center and hide under the benches, always my favorite way to spend a Saturday night. But by the time he started
Blossom,
our love had faded. After a visit to his home in the Valley, his parents drove me home one night and I knew something had changed, although I would carry the memory of our love for years to come.

My first intense, heart-pounding infatuation came when I was eight. It was the moment I met Andy Gibb. To this day, I can still smell his cologne and hear his voice. He did two episodes of
Punky Brewster
, and my love only grew as we worked together. He had the biggest heart of anyone I had ever met, and he showed me such kindness. He wore these bright red leather pants and he made me feel like I was a queen. After we finished taping the second episode, he asked me to come to his room because he had something special for me. I walked in, my heart pounding through my chest, and he told me to close my eyes. He wore the same black sequined jacket on
Punky
that he had worn when he hosted
Solid Gold
, and as my eyes were shut tight, he wrapped it around me and told me that it now belonged to me. I still have the jacket to this day. A few months ago, I was standing in a store with my daughters when I heard the song that he sang to me on
Punky
playing. It was a song I had searched for over the years and now someone else was singing it, but it was the same song. My heart melted and tears fell down my cheeks. My girls said, “Mommy, what's wrong?” I replied, “Someone very special once sang this to me.” When we got home, we curled up on the couch and I played them the clip of him singing to me on YouTube. The video was grainy and old-school, but if you looked closely at my face, you could see how in love with him I was.

By eight and a half there was R. J. Williams, who was the bad boy on
Punky
, and he stole my heart early on. We would kiss on-set and we didn't care who saw us. People thought it was cute. I guess you could say we taught each other how to French-kiss, although we didn't know what it meant and I certainly didn't understand what was French about it. By age nine, I had moved on to Chad Allen, who was on
Punky
with me for a few episodes. We would spend weekends at each other's houses, and Tori would count how many minutes we would cuddle for. Chad was great—we went on years later to play brother and sister together in a movie in Thailand with Pat Morita and became great friends. We would listen to Depeche Mode and the Cure, but the spark was no longer there. Chad went on to like boys as well, but he was a gentle and great early boyfriend.

The gorgeous and lovable Andy Gibb and me on the set of
Punky
. I get flustered just looking at this picture. That was the black sequined jacket he gave me, and I still adore it.

Here I am with Charlie on Henry's couch. My cheeks were burning red and I was having a full-blown crush attack.

 

At about ten years old, I was sent home one day from the set because of how boy-crazy I was. Charlie Sheen and I had the same publicist, and this was around the time
Wall Street
had come out. I was looking particularly messy that day, disheveled from playing rough on-set. I was rehearsing a scene with Cherie as she whispered, “Is that Charlie Sheen in the bleachers?” I looked up and there he was, sitting in the empty audience seats, in a black suit jacket, white T-shirt, and sunglasses. I was in total awe. After the scene was over, we met. I was so flustered that I turned bright red. He sat next to me on the big seventies couch in Henry's living room and put his arm around me for some pictures. I could barely contain myself. I could feel my cheeks burning, and my chest about to explode. He was very sweet, and as we spoke, random people began coming up to me to check my temperature, putting their hands on my forehead, thinking I was sick.
No, I'm not sick; I'm having a full-blown internal crush freak-out
, I thought to myself. The studio nurse came down and determined that I had far too high a fever to continue working. It was the first and only time I was sent home from set—all because of a crush temperature. Awesome. If I was going to keep having surprise visitors, I would need to work on hiding my crush fevers. That one lasted for a few weeks, at least until Johnny Depp showed up for a visit.

At eleven, I worked with Mark-Paul Gosselaar for the first time, and we hit it off beautifully. He had dirty-blond hair and green eyes. He was a sweetheart. I put his head shot up in my room, and I guess you could say he was my boyfriend from that very moment—although the term was used loosely, as we had only hugged at that point. There was a place in Hollywood called Alfie's Soda Pop Club where kids would hang out, dance, and drink soda. It was awesome, like a party every weekend. It was at one of these parties, while the DJ was playing LL Cool J's “I Need Love,” that I remember kissing Mark-Paul for the first time. He was chewing a green minty gum and it was very sweet and romantic. He lived in Valencia and I lived in Burbank, thirty miles apart, and a long-distance relationship was not in the cards, but on a few occasions over the years, I remember us hanging out while my mom drove us around looking outside at the moonlight. He was kind and loving. But by the time I did
Saved by the Bell
, he was off with some beautiful girl and I was kind of interested in Mario Lopez. Mario was super sexy and had the biggest biceps you have ever seen. Years later, Mark Paul and I did a movie together and laughed for days about our history and how far we had come.

By the time I turned thirteen, I had my first real taste of a bad boy. His name was Balthazar Getty, and he quickly became one of my closest friends. We would stay up late talking on the phone, and he introduced me to all of the best music. He exuded cool and was just tough enough to make your heart race. One night he told me that he was going to come to visit me. He was over the hill in Hollywood and I was deep in the Valley. He said not to worry, that he would get there. The next thing I knew, he and his friend were pulling up to my house on his friend's brother's dirt bike they had stolen. Aw, the lengths we will go to at that age. After hours of hanging out, they headed back and got pulled over by the police. Thirteen and fearless. I loved that about Balt.

When it came time for my junior prom, I had only one person I wanted as my date, and it was Balthazar. He showed up to my house with a gray suit and a cool tie. It was a hot getup, very mature for his fourteen years of age. He proceeded to get me into all kinds of fun trouble at the prom, and then we headed to Malibu, where we ate chocolate cake at Gladstones. Before we got to our friend's car, he said, “Hey, let's take a walk down to the beach.” We all headed down to the water, and, in true bad-boy fashion, he picked me up and carried me into the ocean with him. There we were, decked out in all of our prom clothes, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and it was awesome. All these years later I am still friends with Balthazar and his wife, Rosetta. As I stood at his daughter's birthday party a few months ago and saw him give his daughter her present, I couldn't help but smile and laugh to myself. It was a dirt bike.