Crush

When I was a junior, I really liked a boy who was in a couple of my classes. He was generally considered dorky, I think, (which I also was) but I didn’t care because he looked just a little like Clark Kent  and he was more interested in Star Trek and chess than girls, so it was a challenge. I remember that this boy (whom I will now call Todd to protect his identity, though it will take you all of 20 seconds to figure it out) wore striped polo shirts and a constantly perplexed look, as though other people’s actions made little logical sense to him.

Todd was good at what I was very bad at:  math, being on time for class, mechanical engineering, and not really caring about high school because what came after was more important. When I told my best friend, Jill, that I liked Todd, she paused and looked at me. “Todd?” she asked. Then she had me clarify which Todd. Then she asked whether that was the same Todd that went to our school. I didn’t see why it was so hard to believe—you could tell he was going to be really good looking in ten years, and he was smart, too. His sister was a few years older and she was beautiful. Todd was also somewhat exotic, as he was from Gilmanton instead of Gilford, and I was  (and still am) a huge Grace Metalious fan. I imagined Todd’s family as going back generations in Gilmanton, and possibly being the basis of some of the characters in the book. It didn't matter that some of those characters did things like raping their stepdaughters or drinking themselves to death--that just meant he had a dangerous side.

So I made a great effort junior year to get Todd to talk to me, and then to get him to like me. I joined the chess club he started so I could spend more time with him (and learned how to play chess, too, so thank you, Todd). I would stop by the drafting room after school, where he used a slide rule to sketch designs at an easel-like table, and I would try to ask intelligent questions about what he was doing—mostly questions like “What are you drawing?” and “When are you going to be done with that?” Then Mr. Stone, who doubled as our driver’s ed teacher, would come in and give me the stink eye as though I had polluted the masculine sanctuary of the drafting room with my girly laugh and incessant talking.

Here is the crazy thing, though:  my technique of wearing Todd down sort of worked (as it would work nearly ten years later with my dear husband, but that's another story). By September senior year, when we came back to school, I was in both science and English with Todd. I noticed him being friendlier to me, even seeking me out during recess or after school. I officially found out that Todd liked me from, of all people, my freshman brother. For an entire day I was really happy—I imagined us bringing flowers to Grace Metalious’ grave, walking hand in hand down the hallways, him sending me a carnation for Valentine’s Day to show the whole school a boy liked me. I wrote in my diary that it was officially the first day of my relationship with Todd.

And the last:  the very next day I woke up and decided I only liked him as a friend. Just like that. And probably no more than two days later, he decided he only liked me as a friend and moved on to someone else. We did stay friends, though (at least for the rest of that year) and never spoke again about our almost-relationship. The last I heard, he had a really cool and interesting job (something involving creating a certain kind of guitar or amp?), which was no surprise to me. 

That's one thing that was so great about high school:  throughout almost all of it, you could change your mind about anything--your future career, your college choice, your part-time job, the person you had a crush on--and it didn't really matter. It was unlikely that you'd really do any lasting damage, to yourself or to anyone else, with these last-minute changes of heart. Or perhaps it just seemed that way.