First Crush

Hmmm .... was just reading a blog by Kristy about her first big (and lasting) "crush" ... which you really ought to read if you are alive, as everyone has experienced something like this at least once in their lives.

For me, it was a guy in junior high school ... like Kristy, I don't want to write his name because ... oh who knows, really, he might find out? He went to my church and was the same age as me, so I got to see him weekly in confirmation as well as occasionally passing him in the hallway in school. We had no classes together, and shared no interests or activities. But I had a secret weapon. I had a job in junior high - every morning during home room, I was one of a select group of girls (don't know why we were all girls, but we were) who got to take notes and deliver papers to teachers and students all throughout the school building. Remember, this was WAY before computers and cell phones and any other technologically efficient communication devices existed. Back then, to communicate during the school day, teachers relied on adolescent legs.

Anyway, since I had the freedom to roam the halls for those precious 12 minutes every morning, it allowed me to surreptitiously and anonymously slip notes into HIS locker, confident no one would ever see me.

I don't really remember what I wrote to him, or if I wrote daily or weekly or - trying to show my "coolness" - sporadically so he would never know if there would be a note of not. But I do remember once writing "If you want to know who I am, {of course I never SIGNED the notes!!!} wear ... " and I described my favorite shirt of his.

He wore it.

And I was WAY, WAY, WAY too chicken to come clean.

The crush went on. The summer between 9th and 10th grade, I got the idea to call him. Remember, no caller ID. We would chat occasionally - I would be sweaty and nervous and my voice would, no doubt, shake. But still I never revealed my identity.

Now it gets fuzzy.... at the end of some school year (I really can't remember which, though I still have the evidence somewhere so I could go find out), I got up the nerve to ASK. HIM. TO. SIGN. MY. YEARBOOK.

And he said YES.

I felt like Kristy felt when her crush asked to come over and sing.

He wrote something like "Have a great summer." or something equally personalized. And now it's coming back to me. He signed my 9th grade yearbook. It was AFTER that close, personal encounter, that I got the nerve to call him over the summer.

And one day, after many, many phone calls, I told him who I was.

We hung up, and that was it.

Crush was over, I never called him again, and didn't pine after him when high school started in the fall.

But I still think of him occasionally, look him up in the class directory after class reunions, and I admit to googling him a few years back, so I know where he lives and what he does. He owns a family lodge on a lake up north, with his wife and 2 daughters. I do wonder what his impression of all this was, way back then.

Ahh, adolescence.