Affairs of the Heart- a Comedy in 3 Acts, Act One scene 1

My personal thoughts on love, sex, and life.

The First Crush.

I think I fell in love for the first time when I was 10 years old. Okay, more like a crush but to a 10-year-old it was life’s first love. Her name was Christine (some names I’ll change and some I won’t- the guilty parties will know who they are!) and she had long, blonde hair and blue eyes (gee, bet you wouldn’t have guessed that one). I had known her since kindergarten and probably played with her on occasions (you know, the way little boys and girls do-no, not “doctor” and get your mind out of the gutter) but throughout most of grade school I never gave a thought towards her and she of me. We also came from differing social status in that my dad was a laborer and her dad was a white-collar worker (tax accountant, I think). Needless to say, our paths seldom cross and our circles hardly ever met and, you get the point.

One day during a warm September I looked over at her from across the classroom and I was struck by the epiphany of her beauty. Her hair looked like it sparkled under the bright fluorescent light, her pale skin was smooth like undisturbed cream. She was a vision in her dazzling flower print summer dress. I felt my heart beat fast, my skin breaking into a cold sweat and honestly thinking I was coming down with something really awful. I was right. I was in love.

Now, the worst part about being in love and in the 5th grade was that, as a boy, you maybe the only one who think girls are great. You can’t tell anyone without breaking the sacred taboo of speaking your feelings or thinking that girls weren’t icky. This was further re-enforced by the fact that girls thought that boys could not be anything other then gross. From the very start I realized I was doomed. So, I did what any boy in my situation would have done, I did stupid things to attract her attention.

At first I did all the usual stuff. I jumped from the highest part of the monkey bars and nearly broke my arm. I popped wheelies on my banana seat bike in the parking lot after school and nearly got suspended. I even wrestled four boys in a great pile on just to show how strong I was (ok, the guys were skinny 4th graders and I was bigger then they were-but that wasn’t the point at the time). In all those times not once did she ever look towards my way. Then I came up with an idea. I was going to profess my love to her in the form of a note.

Now, I just could not write it all out in plain English for two reasons; one, what if one of the other kids read it and two, it wasn’t cool enough (there had to be, in my mind, that “oh neat” factor). So I wrote it in code. Not just any code. I wrote it in Egyptian hieroglyphs. I thought my plan was perfect. I worked hard copying pictographs of what I believed were the equivalent representative letters from the World Book encyclopedias we had in our classroom. After practicing until I thought they were perfect I wrote the words “Christine I Love You” down in columns onto construction paper and rolled it up like a papyrus scroll. Of course I provided the key and just to through others off I made several other ones with stupid things written in them (like, “meet me after school to play army” or “you have monkey butt breath” those sorts of things). The day I planned to do this came (it was a Friday in January, I think) and at the beginning of class I passed the scrolls.

I can’t remember what I was expecting. Did I think that she would be impressed enough to rush up to me and proclaim her mutual adoration? Did I believe that she would pass on to me a sly look and a wink with a promise to discuss this wonderful news after school? What I do remember was seeing her cheeks redden in furious rage and embarrassment as she slowly translated the note. When she ripped it into pieces she ripped my heart as well. But that was not the worst of it.

Nosy kids want in on what commotion occurs in the classroom. And when you have the prettiest girl in the classroom looking like she was about to annihilate someone, you just can’t resist finding out what it was that put her into this condition. The ripped up note in the wastebasket was the clue and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever it said was the answer. The news spread quickly, my mortification became more acute, and her anger more fierce (and never did it abate for the remainder of the year). At St Valentine’s day card distribution in class she ripped up my card to her and she didn’t give me one. The year went on and we never spoke, never played together and just avoided each other as much as one can in a classroom of 25 children.

When school ended and summer had arrived we all said our good-byes to our teacher. We ran out laughing thinking that even though we will begin middle school in September it was a long ways away and we didn‘t have a care for now. When the new school year did begin I found out that Christine had been enrolled in a private middle school and that I would probably never see her again. I had mixed emotions about this. At one level I was relieved because during the summer things had died down (I claimed temporary insanity) and did not want to endure anymore of the teasing from the past year. This was a chance for a new beginning. But at the same time I missed her. There was an empty place inside of me that I could not understand how to fill. It made me sad. And as sad people do I did what felt natural. I filled that emptiness with a new focus for my attention. And this time I was determined not to make the same mistakes.