Crush at first sight

This past week I have been listening to a book series written by one of my high school friends.  The Ridge Water High Series by Judy Corry has inspired this post.  While listening I could see her personality shining through and some of the things she incorporated into these books reminded me of my high school experience!  High school, a place full of excitement, drama, and rogue hormones, a great place to start a soapy story!  It made me think of my first major crush that I couldn't get over for a long time.

Scene of the crush at first sight:
8th grade, 8th period, history class, well I think it was a history class.  Him and his good friend sat behind me and my good friend.  He was one of the cutest boys I had ever seen, and he was nice to me, and funny.  During that year we developed a school friendship, or an 8th period friendship.  His good friend became one of my closest friends throughout high school as well.  Any way he was tall, dark and handsome, sort of.  Light brown hair, blue eyes, athletic build.  He was a runner, he was on the cross country team in high school.  I had a feeling he liked my friend from history class more than me, but I think he liked me a little too.

Okay, so before all of this even happened I had decided I wasn't going to be one of those girls who went head over heels for a guy and fall in love in high school and have a steady boyfriend, not my style.  Nor was I going to be one of those girls who had a new flavor of the week.......BOY CRAZY!  I had some friends like that and I thought it was just that.......crazy!  In high school we remained friends, while having a few classes together, including band.  We were in pep band together, so that made football games and basketball games even more enjoyable.  I even remember a few games our freshman year when he, a saxaphone player, came down to the flute section to sit with me, sometimes even sharing a blanket together!  It was sweet and it made me swoon every time.  The after game dances were always fun because I usually got to dance with him.  I swear every time I saw him my heart raced skipping beats.  It even gave me a little headache after the rush of my heart caused my head to feel like a balloon floating away......ah!

I remember having so many great conversations with him, we really were great friends.  Sophomore year presented a little problem!  I loved seeing him in band, but I found out he was switching to Bass Clarinet in order to get into the Symphonic band.  The elite band had a shortage of bass clarinets, well they had none, haha!  Being a flute player, it was not likely I would make the elite band since there was no shortage of flutes!  I immediately went to my band teacher and volunteered to be a bass clarinet player.  I mean I wanted to be in the elite group, but my crush was the main reason.  I wasn't going to let him leave me behind, I had to find a way to spend more time with him, without making it obvious I liked him.  I had never played the clarinet before so I had to learn a whole new instrument, but to my surprise it was very similar to the flute, most of the fingering positions were the same.  Yeah, this was a great idea, I thought!  I made myself into a leader and made my band teacher love me, all the while getting very close to the person I was head over heels for!  Did I mention I wasn't boy crazy?  Of course not, I was only a one boy crazy kind of crazy!  My plan worked brilliantly and lucky for me no one else had volunteered for the spot so I did not have to do tryouts, well I did, I still had to memorize all of my scales, but I had no competition!  That seat next to crush boy was mine, all mine!

It was great! I spent 3 years in that seat next to him as we competed back and forth for 1st chair!  Sophomore year I think he did like me a little, not really sure, but a little I think.  My birthday came in November, I turned 16 before many of my classmates and he would turn 16 in January, just in time for the girl's choice sweethearts dance.  Of course I asked him and I made it clear to a few other girls who liked him that I was asking him!  I wanted him to be my first date!  It was perfect!  I took another friend with me to his house where we trashed his room with confetti, balloons, shredded paper, and silly string.  I think I used roses in how I asked him, something about the meaning of the color. My memory is a little hazy on this detail, but I think it went something along the lines of telling him what all the colors meant and then something about how I would love it if he would go with me to sweethearts and it would make me so Happy!  I left a note offering to help him clean up, you know, see if I could spend more time with him.  Well that did not work!  This asking and answering was the perfect example of the differences between boys and girls!  He promptly cleaned up the mess and a few days later I found the same mess in my room, only 10 times worse!  On my bed sat a cheetah print toilet seat.  When I lifted the lid I found tootsie rolls and lemon heads, gross right?  Yeah, totally!  The seat said "If I have TO GO, I'm glad I'm going with you!"  WOW!  I was a little shocked at this answer, but it produced quite the side-splitting laugh!!  After I had cleaned up my room that Friday afternoon in total elation I sat down to watch TV and he showed up at my doorstep asking me out for ice cream!  He told me he answered me that way because he knew I could take it and that I would laugh and not be offended.  YEP! I asked with flowers and he answered with a toilet seat!  Yes I was the romantic here and he was indeed the gross boy!  I appreciated the fact that he wanted to make me laugh and I liked him even more because he just showed up wanting to spend time with me.  I have no idea how I got so lucky as to come across some old pictures documenting the toilet seat and the trashing of my room.  I started going through some old boxes and my cedar chest full of high school stuff.  I don't even remember having these pictures!

We went to the dance together and had a great time.  I had the perfect, beautiful dress, it was this shiny blue green color with beaded floral design all over it.  It happened to be strapless, but my mom came to the rescue and added a thick strap to it for me, making it as modest as we could.  We had a group and groups usually chose to do day dates before the dance.  So the girls picked up their dates and came to my house for breakfast, and then we did something during the day, hiking I think.  For dinner we went to Wendy's in our formal wear and ate off of fine china, haha!  When I picked him up he gave me a bouquet of flowers, really nice fancy ones, roses.  I was on cloud nine all day and night!  Well we didn't really date anymore after that, but remained friends.  My major crush remained until probably Senior year.

During our Junior year he had a girlfriend.  Summer before Junior year we had a college chemistry class together and we were lab partners.  His future girl friend happened to be in that class too and there was chemistry going on in the lab, but it wasn't between me and him!  As I watched them flirt, I suddenly felt like the third wheel on a date and I was probably rolling my eyes a lot! Haha!  I could see what was happening!  It was no surprise to me when they started dating!  Senior year I became the student director of the pep band which meant I lead the band in what to play and when to play it at all of the games it was a fun job! It was sort of satisfying to know that he had to pay attention to me and look at me often, haha!  I was in Madrigals with his girlfriend and she was sort of a friend, I had known her for a long time too.  It was hard for me knowing he liked someone else, but I eventually got over it and I still enjoyed our friendship.  I never wanted to be the extreme jealous type and I still wanted to have my friends that was the most important thing to me.  I realized that despite how much I liked him, the idea of having a boyfriend was just not for me.  I realized that I was happy with the relationship we had so I was able to get over it quick!


His good friend that had the 8th grade, 8th period history with us was one of my best friends in high school.  He and I dated a little.  During Junior year best friend boy brought up the idea of dating steady and I turned him down, not my style remember?  I kind of felt bad, I really liked him, as a friend.  I think he knew I was majorly crushing on his friend so when his friend, crush boy, was dating someone steady he must have thought I was over him.  We were such good friends that I did not really think of him that way, but we did go out on occasion.  Everyone at school already thought we were an item.  When he asked someone else to prom and in a bold, courageous move, I showed up stag with my 2 friends, who also did not have dates, so many people approached me asking why he didn't take me, including his date haha!  Years later when I worked with his prom date at the forest service, she still had no idea why he had asked her and not me to prom, it was a very entertaining conversation!  Haha!

I ended up writing to him while he was on his mission.  He had a girlfriend when he left, but he asked me to write to him.  I wrote to best friend boy and sent him boxes his entire mission.  Before he came home he emailed me asking if we could date.  He said he thought we should and I said "okay".  So when he came home we went out a few times and I had this feeling he just wasn't into it as much as I thought he would be.  When I called him one day to ask him to go out, I think it was Valentine's Day, he said he was taking his mom to dinner, even if that were true, lame excuse!!  More importantly there was no "let's reschedule", or "take a rain check?"  In the email he seemed eager and excited, but when we hung out we had fun, but something just felt off.  Turns out he had met someone on his flight back from his mission.  She was also a missionary serving in the same mission and they ended up engaged 2 or 3 months after he got back.  Go figure, this did not surprise me, I did not have a great track record for dating.  This was one of those moments where I told God I knew he had a sense of humor, haha! 

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed, but I was more upset about the fact that it took him so long to mention it to me.  I guess he was trying to spare my feelings, or something, but honestly I would have been happy if he had just been upfront with me.  I got over it pretty fast because the more I thought about us being a couple the more I thought we would kill each other.  We fought all the time as friends and we did not enjoy many of the same things, we always had something to disagree about.  Maybe that is what made our friendship so fun!  When we had calculus together in high school, our study sessions usually consisted of watching Survivor or American Idol and trying to do a problem here or there during the commercials! It was fun, but I felt irritated most of the time because we got nothing done, haha!  That might be why I did not pass the AP exam to get college credit!

In hind sight, I loved high school because of the many amazing friends I had!  Good friends were what I needed and what I always looked for!  The friends I had in high school, no matter how close or distant they were, changed me for the better in more ways than they probably ever knew or realized.  Some of these friends were like family to me and enriched my life!  Moral of the story?  I don't know.............? God has a sense of humor, if you are in high school, date a variety, not just one, it's more fun that way, oh and don't be afraid to show up to a dance without a date.  I felt like people respected me for it, especially since it was a rarity when someone had the guts to do it!  Don't waste time being jealous, it truly does nothing for you!  Be honest with your friends even if it has to do with FEELINGS! LOL!  Don't be afraid to be bold or memorable, don't just go with the crowd, do things your way!