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Retro Love:
First crushes...
DON'T SUE US
As I mentioned in our Relationship Issue, my first crush was on a boy in the second grade who made me want to play kickball with him. So the title of this article is technically a lie because I'm not going to talk about him. First of all, I was only seven and I have a hard time remembering things that happened when I was seven. Second of all, there's not much to tell, so I'll skip to the juicier stuff.
This is the story of an ordinary girl, a basketball star, and a broken heart.
In the ninth grade, my friend had a huge crush on Will (all names except mine have been changed to protect the innocent). Will was one grade above us, and in a small high school, already very popular and one of the best basketball players on our team. I didn't pay much attention to Will, or Bill as I thought his name was at the time, because I was busy crushing on someone else. Come the last day of school before summer break, she and I made a pact to be more adventurous. And by adventurous I mean that I had to stop poor Will in the hallway, tardily on his way to an exam, so I could ask (on behalf of my friend) for his number. When I motioned to her, I was chagrined to find that she had run away and hid in the washroom. Nevertheless, Will passed me his phone number.
The summer came and went, lazy and hot and uneventful. My friend had talked to Will several times, but nothing ever materialized.
One day, in the eleventh grade, I woke up and declared my love for Will. Will was in two of my classes that year, accounting and math. I thanked God daily that Will didn't like to do his homework and had to repeat those classes. I don't remember how or why we started talking, but it probably had something to do with word getting around that I had a crush on him. Will never uttered two words to me in accounting class because he had his own group of also-repeating-this-course friends, but in math class he liked to sit behind me and whisper sweet nothings in my ear. Okay, he never whispered sweet nothings in my ear, but he did borrow a pencil once. It was those math class days that I treasured the most, and the first time that I had a perfect attendance in one class.
Eventually, Will passed his number onto me, and we talked on the phone a handful of times. Even though he was popular and everyone thought he was outgoing, I saw a different, vulnerable side to him. Or maybe I just wanted to believe that. It's surprising how we can conjure up things when we want something badly enough.
We never talked about hooking up, because that's not what you do when you're sixteen. Every time I was around him, I felt self-conscious and awkward. I had butterflies in my stomach, and those butterflies were on acid. His birthday fell one day before mine, and I thought that meant we would live in perfect bliss forever and ever. He wrote me a note in math class one day. It was cryptic and weird, and I'm not sure if it was a shame or a blessing that I never asked him about it. Basically, he said that he didn't know if I liked him or not, and he was sorry for his actions. Now I'm wondering if he did something horrible to me, but I'm guessing that he was just high out of his mind that day.
I went to watch every single basketball game the team played that year. And for a girl who doesn't like to spend even five minutes watching professional basketball players dunk a ball in a small basket, it was surely a sign of my love. (And for those of you wondering, that year our basketball team was this-close to advancing to the semi-finals. Except by this-close I mean we managed to beat two teams). I would go home and analyze every single word he said to me, whether I had anyone to listen to me or not. I would hang around his locker but totally ignore him, because I was young and foolish and shy. I would happen to walk by his class and tie my shoelace in front of the door, except my shoes didn't have laces. You get the gist.
But there's more to this story than a simple case of stalking. The friend I mentioned at the beginning of the story, the one that wanted his number and ran away, told me that he had been off-and-on with some curly-haired girl from another school. Funny, he never mentioned her. She came down to a couple of our school dances, but acted lukewarm towards him, leaving even more unanswered questions. And then there was Laura, who had loved him since the ninth grade. In retrospect, Laura was probably the perfect girl for him. She was on the basketball team, dance club, drama club, yearbook club, student council, cheerleading squad, and people who love clubs club. She also had curly hair - a trend I overlooked because I knew a perm just wouldn't improve my looks. Meanwhile, I despised anything that required me to spend extra hours or effort in school. I hung out in the parking lot smoking cigarettes and practicing my authority-hating sneer.
For six months, Will was all I ever thought about (well, that and food). Everyone over the age of five knew I liked Will. So when Mark, a close friend at the time, told me that he liked me, it was a complete shock. He had a cat-infested house, and since I'm allergic to cats, we had to barricade ourselves in his room. But I knew the cats were lurking outside, waiting for me. It would just be a matter of time…anyway, where was I? Ah yes, Mark told me that he could treat me so much better than Will could because I deserved that. If this had been a movie, you would cue the pinging piano note of love and the well-placed tear on my cheek. And what a catch he was…tall, handsome, funny, charming. But since it's my life, I reacted by telling him that I thought we could just be friends, and went back to obsessing over the evil cats.
I think the reason why I didn't end up dating Mark was because deep down inside, I still held hope for Will. How easy it is to become so wrapped up in one person that nothing else seems to matter. I needed to get back to reality, and one spring day I did. I was making my way to the subway when I noticed Will walking hand-in-hand with Laura. This was a crash-course in heartbreak, and I went from bewildered to angry to hurt in five seconds. The year ended, and although I still saw Will the next year, we never talked like we used to. I also found that he had changed for the worse; no longer was he the sensitive athlete I had once thought him to be. Or maybe he had never changed, I had just learned to open my eyes.
In my OAC year, Will transferred schools. I heard from the gossip mill that he had broken up with Laura and generally wasn't doing well. Two years later, I had dinner at a local restaurant and saw him again. The butterflies and longing were gone, replaced by the feeling you get when you wake up from a dream. I remembered the year that I had known him, but it seemed to be a lifetime ago. We said hi, and just as before, walked out of each other's lives. ¤ C.Ho.