Write Back Weekend "I Want You To Want Me"
Once again, it's "welcome new renter" time here at AOGB. This week's renter is a young girl full of promise named Katie. Of course I don't really know what it means to be full of promise, but it always sounded good and it somehow seemed fitting here. Her site is called Kat Scratch Fever. Right now is a great time to visit her because she's doing all the "getting to know you" stuff by devoting individual posts to fun and random facts about herself. Pimping Katie's blog also gives me the opportunity to turn a phrase I don't often get to. I've got a fever and the only prescription is more Kat Scratch Fever! So what are you waiting for? Go fill yours, won't you?
And speaking of what you're waiting for...here's Write Back Weekend.
There are a lot of things in this world that serve to seperate us. Man versus woman. Black versus white. Miracle Whip versus Mayonnaise. You catch my drift.
But one commonality that manages to unite both the popular and the wallflower, is that we all had an unrequited crush at one time or another. Maybe we went for it, maybe we didn't. Perhaps we created grand gestures like melancholy mix tapes or even ate paste all in the names of impressing him or her. Ahh, the things we do for love.
This is where I'm not unlike many of you. This past Tuesday, when I asked you to tell me about your first crushes, I received a variety of responses. Some of you said you couldn't remember that far back, while others chose not to share because they remembered all too well. Then there was Nat who was kind enough to literally take us back, pictures and all.
Those of you who chose not to share proved a point without even knowing it. This point can be best described by a line from the timeless classic, Sixteen Candles:
Sam's Dad: "That's why they call them crushes, if they were easy they'd call 'em something else."
As I sat down to write this post I quickly realized I backed myself into a technical loophole. I can't unequivocally say who my first crush was or when it occurred. I also can't say that my first crush didn't involve somebody famous because knowing me, it most definitely did. So I'm backtracking a bit and stating, for the record, that my story is probably not my first crush, ever, but it's the most crushing of my crushes and thus the story I chose to tell.
The year was probably 1990, maybe 1991. I was in seventh grade at the time. I don't know about all of you, but there always seems to be a year that manages to definitively stand out amongst the rest as the worst year in your adolescent life. For me, seventh grade was definitely that year. I was overweight, I had horrible hair and I went to a school that was a lot like the popular show at the time, Beverly Hills, 90210. You do the math.
No matter where you go to school, the middle school years seem to be the time that cruelty reaches its peak. My school saw this transition and raised the awkward factor, tenfold. I had my group of friends, but while others were beginning their random rites of passage into courting, I was content to sit out the next few years, give or take a decade.
At the time I also should say that most of my girl friends were beginning to enter the boy crazy phase of their lives. I had one friend in particular who used to call me, knowing my way with the written word, and ask me to write poems in her latest obsession's honor. I obliged because it was fun to live vicariously through the lives of others.
I suppose some of the boys at my school were cute, but to be honest, I had a hard time seeing past the bully exterior. I know they say the meaner a guy is to a girl the more she tends to fall for him, but this adage just didn't apply to me. So while some of the guys might have had the girls swooning, their behavior is what really caught my attention, not how they looked in their Z. Cavaricci's.
This is how I first came to notice JP. I was in seventh grade English class, sitting next to one of the more popular girls, a gift bestowed upon me by my fairweather friend, the alphabet. JP liked this girl and so he wanted to come over and visit her which meant sitting next to her for a minute or two. Now in my school there were many ways that a boy would attempt to do this and most of them were just plain mean. But JP caught my eye because he came over and asked me if he could sit there. He not only asked, he did so with kindness, a virtue very rarely found in boys his age. And not only did he ask, he asked me and he smiled.
And one smile was all it took.
From then on I was smitten with the idea of JP. Finally I understood the crushes the girls around me were having, only I had convinced myself mine was different, that mine ran deeper, and in some ways, it did. But although I knew what it finally felt like to like a real, live boy, I had no desire to broadcast who my crush was to to the rest of the world, also known as Marlboro Middle School. This is where things got complicated. Sleepovers served to be awkward because this is when the girls would gather around and discuss who their latest crush was. Where it used to be awkward because I didn't have one, it suddenly grew more awkward because I did. I didn't want to reveal my crush out of fear of being outed to him, not that he really knew who I was, nor would he care. No, somehow I believed my crush only had real value if I kept it all to myself.
Ultimately I did decide to confide in a few close friends. Most of them agreed with me that he seemed like a nice boy, but mostly they didn't understand why I chose him out of all the boys in the school. He was tall and scrawny, and at the time I didn't know that would ultimately be my "type" for years to come. He was popular, but not overly popular- he was just- there. Plus I didn't really know anything about him besides what I overheard and imagined in my mind. But explaining to someone why you like somebody else, especially at that age, is a feat often easier said than done.
Now although I've used some finite details to gain your attention, I suppose you could say my crush story is not all that different from anyone else's. But again, this is where you'd be wrong. For seventh grade came and went. And during that time I wrote many a poems for my friend who went through crushing on boys like she was drinking water. Sometimes my girlfriends even got the guy, or a guy. Meanwhile time for me, had stopped, because I was still crushing on JP. This is one reason why I'm pretty sure I was a dog in a previous life. I take loyalty to a new level.
Now I'm not talking the following year or even the year after that. I'm saying I "fell" for JP in seventh grade and liked him all the way up...until we graduated. Don't talk to me about devotion. I own devotion. I even tried noticing other boys and sometimes I did. Like the one time I was eating at Chili's and saw a cute boy from across the room...only to realize it WAS, I kid you not, JP. Nope, I couldn't get away from that boy, not even when I tried. Not only did I still like JP, I had never had a class with him since that seventh grade English class.
Not until, that is, my second semester, senior year.
Being in love with the idea of being in love I felt it was fate. I was no longer awkward or at least as awkward. Deep down I believed that maybe all of this pining was not in vain, that it could be a great story we'd tell our grandkids one day. It didn't matter that he was half of one of the "super couples" of our high school at the time. He smiled at me once, and many times since, making me think that I must have looked as transparent as I felt.
Adding insult to injury a few of my friends added fuel to the fire, saying they could honestly see JP and I working as a couple. They weren't mocking me, they were actually serious. I even went through the whole classic, "call and hang up scenario" once. How was I to know I was actually calling his grandparents house?
One day I remember entering class in a good mood from something else, and he saw this. And believe it or not, HE started a conversation with ME. You would think I would have memorized the details of this conversation, but I think I was just in shock that it happened at all. It was something lame and something, no doubt, he gave no thought to, yet it was ---something.
Unfortunately, just being in a class with him five years later did not make someone like him dream of dating someone like me. Sure, sometimes he would seemingly knowingly smile my way, and I would be certain I blushed, but the story ended rather anti-climactically. We graduated and went our seperate ways. No Google searches or My Space scavenger hunts have turned up any new leads. But maybe that's a good thing.
Knowing my track record, if we hadn't "lost touch" I'd probably still be crushing on him now.
And speaking of what you're waiting for...here's Write Back Weekend.
There are a lot of things in this world that serve to seperate us. Man versus woman. Black versus white. Miracle Whip versus Mayonnaise. You catch my drift.
But one commonality that manages to unite both the popular and the wallflower, is that we all had an unrequited crush at one time or another. Maybe we went for it, maybe we didn't. Perhaps we created grand gestures like melancholy mix tapes or even ate paste all in the names of impressing him or her. Ahh, the things we do for love.
This is where I'm not unlike many of you. This past Tuesday, when I asked you to tell me about your first crushes, I received a variety of responses. Some of you said you couldn't remember that far back, while others chose not to share because they remembered all too well. Then there was Nat who was kind enough to literally take us back, pictures and all.
Those of you who chose not to share proved a point without even knowing it. This point can be best described by a line from the timeless classic, Sixteen Candles:
Sam's Dad: "That's why they call them crushes, if they were easy they'd call 'em something else."
As I sat down to write this post I quickly realized I backed myself into a technical loophole. I can't unequivocally say who my first crush was or when it occurred. I also can't say that my first crush didn't involve somebody famous because knowing me, it most definitely did. So I'm backtracking a bit and stating, for the record, that my story is probably not my first crush, ever, but it's the most crushing of my crushes and thus the story I chose to tell.
The year was probably 1990, maybe 1991. I was in seventh grade at the time. I don't know about all of you, but there always seems to be a year that manages to definitively stand out amongst the rest as the worst year in your adolescent life. For me, seventh grade was definitely that year. I was overweight, I had horrible hair and I went to a school that was a lot like the popular show at the time, Beverly Hills, 90210. You do the math.
No matter where you go to school, the middle school years seem to be the time that cruelty reaches its peak. My school saw this transition and raised the awkward factor, tenfold. I had my group of friends, but while others were beginning their random rites of passage into courting, I was content to sit out the next few years, give or take a decade.
At the time I also should say that most of my girl friends were beginning to enter the boy crazy phase of their lives. I had one friend in particular who used to call me, knowing my way with the written word, and ask me to write poems in her latest obsession's honor. I obliged because it was fun to live vicariously through the lives of others.
I suppose some of the boys at my school were cute, but to be honest, I had a hard time seeing past the bully exterior. I know they say the meaner a guy is to a girl the more she tends to fall for him, but this adage just didn't apply to me. So while some of the guys might have had the girls swooning, their behavior is what really caught my attention, not how they looked in their Z. Cavaricci's.
This is how I first came to notice JP. I was in seventh grade English class, sitting next to one of the more popular girls, a gift bestowed upon me by my fairweather friend, the alphabet. JP liked this girl and so he wanted to come over and visit her which meant sitting next to her for a minute or two. Now in my school there were many ways that a boy would attempt to do this and most of them were just plain mean. But JP caught my eye because he came over and asked me if he could sit there. He not only asked, he did so with kindness, a virtue very rarely found in boys his age. And not only did he ask, he asked me and he smiled.
And one smile was all it took.
From then on I was smitten with the idea of JP. Finally I understood the crushes the girls around me were having, only I had convinced myself mine was different, that mine ran deeper, and in some ways, it did. But although I knew what it finally felt like to like a real, live boy, I had no desire to broadcast who my crush was to to the rest of the world, also known as Marlboro Middle School. This is where things got complicated. Sleepovers served to be awkward because this is when the girls would gather around and discuss who their latest crush was. Where it used to be awkward because I didn't have one, it suddenly grew more awkward because I did. I didn't want to reveal my crush out of fear of being outed to him, not that he really knew who I was, nor would he care. No, somehow I believed my crush only had real value if I kept it all to myself.
Ultimately I did decide to confide in a few close friends. Most of them agreed with me that he seemed like a nice boy, but mostly they didn't understand why I chose him out of all the boys in the school. He was tall and scrawny, and at the time I didn't know that would ultimately be my "type" for years to come. He was popular, but not overly popular- he was just- there. Plus I didn't really know anything about him besides what I overheard and imagined in my mind. But explaining to someone why you like somebody else, especially at that age, is a feat often easier said than done.
Now although I've used some finite details to gain your attention, I suppose you could say my crush story is not all that different from anyone else's. But again, this is where you'd be wrong. For seventh grade came and went. And during that time I wrote many a poems for my friend who went through crushing on boys like she was drinking water. Sometimes my girlfriends even got the guy, or a guy. Meanwhile time for me, had stopped, because I was still crushing on JP. This is one reason why I'm pretty sure I was a dog in a previous life. I take loyalty to a new level.
Now I'm not talking the following year or even the year after that. I'm saying I "fell" for JP in seventh grade and liked him all the way up...until we graduated. Don't talk to me about devotion. I own devotion. I even tried noticing other boys and sometimes I did. Like the one time I was eating at Chili's and saw a cute boy from across the room...only to realize it WAS, I kid you not, JP. Nope, I couldn't get away from that boy, not even when I tried. Not only did I still like JP, I had never had a class with him since that seventh grade English class.
Not until, that is, my second semester, senior year.
Being in love with the idea of being in love I felt it was fate. I was no longer awkward or at least as awkward. Deep down I believed that maybe all of this pining was not in vain, that it could be a great story we'd tell our grandkids one day. It didn't matter that he was half of one of the "super couples" of our high school at the time. He smiled at me once, and many times since, making me think that I must have looked as transparent as I felt.
Adding insult to injury a few of my friends added fuel to the fire, saying they could honestly see JP and I working as a couple. They weren't mocking me, they were actually serious. I even went through the whole classic, "call and hang up scenario" once. How was I to know I was actually calling his grandparents house?
One day I remember entering class in a good mood from something else, and he saw this. And believe it or not, HE started a conversation with ME. You would think I would have memorized the details of this conversation, but I think I was just in shock that it happened at all. It was something lame and something, no doubt, he gave no thought to, yet it was ---something.
Unfortunately, just being in a class with him five years later did not make someone like him dream of dating someone like me. Sure, sometimes he would seemingly knowingly smile my way, and I would be certain I blushed, but the story ended rather anti-climactically. We graduated and went our seperate ways. No Google searches or My Space scavenger hunts have turned up any new leads. But maybe that's a good thing.
Knowing my track record, if we hadn't "lost touch" I'd probably still be crushing on him now.
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