He really was not all that. But I digress.
Age 10
Okay, so I told you about my third-grade love life. Now, we skip to fifth grade: this is where it gets interesting. There was this boy, his name was Conner, and he was about the cutest thing you ever did see. His hair fell in his face and he was a year younger, but that didn’t stop my obsession. He had girls in the palm of his hand, all older. He did his rounds in my small group and broke some hearts along the way. I was, of course, a smitten imbecile and thought that his pursuits for me were different and that he actually wanted to be with me. So, as time went on and our school summer camp approached, I prepared myself for my first boyfriend. We had been “flirting” all year. By flirting, I mean giving him my last pop tart at snack time.
He was in fourth grade and was considered a lady’s man because he only dated girls older than him. Yikes, as I type this out, I realize how bonkers it sounds, this nine-year-old boy was the gold in the mine for us prepubescent girls, and he actually managed to hook line and sink our hearts, all the while wearing the same basketball underpants four days in a row. I know because his friends would run up behind him and pull his shorts down to expose the ratty underselling. It was evidently a competition as they took turns in the group, three strikes and you are out, buddy.
Anyway, in the pool at a local country club where we lay our scene, we had him, my best friend at the time, and me with my favorite swimsuit and wild hair that I called my “Pegasus hair”—I was a weird kid. We were all in the deep end, when he expressed his need to tell me something. I was ready, but he wanted to make it interesting, so he decided he would tell my friend underwater. They went under and I was over the moon. Point two seconds later, they came back up— fourth grade lungs are feeble. My best friend then proceeded to whisper that he said he liked me. I was flabbergasted, astounded, perturbed, and a little bit capricious. That is, until he saw my excitement and corrected the previous notion.
“I like you, but only because of your pure kindness.” What the heck, what does that even mean? He was nine. Who did he think he was, some philosopher analyzing me? Um, no thank you. He then proceeded to swim away, and never spoke to me again. I have no words and still do not for that taciturn declaration.
His underpants should have been a dealbreaker
Age 11-13
You will soon notice a trend of disrespectful boys in my life. Most knew that I liked them, but I was strategic with this next guy. So strategic, in fact, that he didn’t even know I existed. For future reference, this is the guy who wrote in my senior yearbook: “We grew up together, I don’t really know you that well, but good luck with life.” Back on topic, I had known little Lander since first grade and said no more than a sentence to him up until sixth grade. We were in the same chorus class. He was an alto, just like me!
Side note, I once tried out to be in a bubble gum commercial and the commercial company owner said my voice was too deep, and if that wasn’t any indication of how my life was going at the moment, I don’t know what was.
I sat a few seats down from him, but that didn’t stop me from staring at him as if I might blink and he would be gone. I’m quite surprised he never noticed. I was doing myself no favors and didn’t bother hiding it. There was only one problem: this other girl named Mary, who was six feet tall and the sweetest person ever, also liked him. I felt as if she deserved him, but that feeling simmered out when I realized the urge for a boyfriend was growing strong. The scene of my crime was the yearly play. This play was yet another rendition of Beauty and the Beast. I tried out for “any part,” a general audition. I was granted the part of a fork. Not just a fork, I was also a waiter. Double casted, thank you very much. Basically, I was born a Broadway star.
At the end of plays, typically the cast comes out one last time, holds hands and bows to the cheers of the crowd. This play was no exception. My theater teacher loved organization, so she insisted we stay in the same positions next to the same people every single night of the show. Inconveniently, Lander was placed one person away from me. Mary was the divider, and as you can imagine, she happily obliged. The show spanned four nights and after three nights of Mary getting to momentarily hold Lander’s hand, I decided on a two-step plan to get myself next to Lander. The stage was in our school cafeteria and the dressing rooms were in the back. We had to walk from the back of the cafeteria to the front of the stage and do our bows.
The last night of the show, I made sure to stay in correct line formation while we passed our teacher, but the second she stopped looking, I tapped Mary on the shoulder and pointed to the floor, telling her she dropped a part of her spoon costume. The costume was one piece of thin spray-painted cardboard and I couldn’t believe she actually fell for that. As she frantically looked for her nonexistent missing piece, I sidestepped and got in front of her.
I didn't look back and kept walking. She was so flustered, she just gave up and came up behind me. She was saying something along the lines of “we are out of order.” I told her to shove it and kept walking. Once we reached the stage, my heart was beating faster than necessary, and I was ready to be bound to the boy. When we grabbed hands, we had to raise them and hold it for pictures. So, we did, and that’s when I noticed that Lander was shorter than me. I almost pulled his arm out of the socket. He winced a little, and I felt bad and bent my arm at the elbow to provide some relief.
I then proceeded to count the seconds we held hands. The best seven seconds of my life.
As of now, he’s a theater geek and a professor at a prestigious liberal arts university. I’m glad at least one of us stuck to performing. I tried out for another play in ninth grade for a new drama teacher and didn’t even get a callback. Lights, camera, and action were not my forte, but I’ll get over it.
I was excited to be a fork.
But what I received was so much more.
Age 14
(Paperboy)
Ah, the preteens era, I remember being one like it was yesterday, where the things I cared about have absolutely no value now. I had a crush on this boy in my class named David. He was your typical funny, fit jock, but he wasn’t a meat head or anything … It’s almost as if these boys liked to prove me wrong. One day, in science class, we were put in groups and his group was seated right next to mine. We were basically one big group working together, the only one who didn’t know was the teacher, but that’s irrelevant.
Anyway, when we finished the experiment, we somehow got on the topic of crushes, and his friend asked me who I liked. My friend then thought it would be the perfect time to tell me that she thought my other friend, Bailey, had a crush on David. Gotta love gossip, so naturally I made direct eye contact with him and said: “Him? Ewwwwwww.” He asked what I was talking about. I denied him and after class ended, he asked his friend who told a variation of what he heard— completely wrong, let me just tell you. And then the next thing to happen was horrifying. He wadded up a piece of paper and threw it at MY FOREHEAD, then laughed and left the room. I was traumatized, and of course, I had the next period with him as well, so he made faces at me from across the room the whole period.
Fast forward after the weekend because of course, it had to happen on a Friday where I had the entire weekend to dwell on it, he came to class acting shy and giving me side glances.
Once we sat in our desks, I asked him what exactly his friend had told him, to which he replied with his head drooped down, “That you liked me or something like that.”
To save my own butt from embarrassment, I threw Bailey under the bus and said, “Is that what he told you! Well, no, I don’t like you. Bailey does.” After a moment of realizing what a terrible friend I was, I quickly covered with, “BUT, NOT ANYMORE.”
The rest of middle school, he looked in the other direction when she came around because apparently, he couldn’t handle the fake affection. Fast forward to high school, I told her what happened, and we laughed about the whole thing because she actually never had a crush on him. A li
ttle tip for all my readers: if someone likes you, and you don’t feel the same, don’t taunt them about it, but also don’t lead them on, especially at such a young age. That could be something they carry with them that affects how they feel about themselves. That’s no good for anyone. The old rule of kindness still applies, and more people need to abide by it.
Intermission: Cheaters
Allow me to interrupt my own jovial recalling so that I may delve into the actual reason I’m writing this book. This is the first of many life lessons I want to cover under the topic of: We have a lot to learn. I hope you can hear me out, my advice may be cheesy, and it may even seem invalid. I claim nothing, except how I feel.
Relationships span far and wide between many different types of people. I like to look at an unhealthy relationship like I look at relationships with junk food. Junk food is not good for everyday consumption. Only having a little bit every once in a while is going to be the most beneficial for a person.
The same goes with relationships. If you find yourself only able to be around someone for a certain amount of time, before they physically or emotionally drain you, they probably are not the person for you. Having a healthy relationship starts with the people involved actually wanting it first and requires full disclosure within the relationship. Honesty is a strong virtue that will never go out of style, which is why it baffles me when people cheat.
You don’t need to satisfy all your “urges” to survive. Those who cheat typically have no understanding of a relationship. That is the bottom line. I’ve always thought that, whenever I get a boyfriend, I will make my views on the subject crystal clear to him. I want him to know that if he ever falls out of love with me, no matter how much it may hurt at the time, I want him to tell me. I would rather be told that than to find out through him cheating. It’s a simple thought process: if you stop liking the person you are with, tell them the truth, have a heart to heart, cry it out, yell, scream, do what you need to do, and move on.
But don’t ever think it’s okay to cheat or be in a relationship with a cheater. That is unhealthy and never going to last. I understand confusion and attraction. I’m aware that people have conflicting feelings. But, if you have a healthy relationship with your partner, it should not be hard to tell them how you are feeling. It’s called common decency.
When people step away from themselves and what they want, they discover the needs of other people. We all have needs, and we all have wants. It’s a proven fact that humans, and creatures, need some type of love. But other desires can be checked for the feelings of another. I’m not a philosopher, or a therapist, or anything significant, but from observation of friends and family, I know the difference between a healthy and unhealthy relationship. I’m sure you do too. If the person you’re with does not, kick them to the curb.
At. My. Forehead.
*Insert shocked & angry facial expression.
Age 16-18
So, what I am about to disclose in my teen crush story is very unnecessary and dramatic, but alas. Over the span of my high school career, I had eyes on this one chill guy and a lot went down (actually, a normal amount of nothing). Although he was arguably better than the other crushes, and I’m tempted to call him by his well-earned title instead of a fake alias... I know I’m not the only one who does that—when you like someone and you don’t want them to know, but you still want to be sneaky and talk about them with your friends, so you call them something else. Just me?
Okay, let’s call him Hotty. Hotty was by far my favorite crush because he actually had a sense of humor, and he, to my warped perception, flirted back in a cute way. That doesn’t mean that he liked me because, like I said earlier, no guys ever like me back, at least, that’s how it’s been for the first three decades of my life. But he was very smart, sweet, and he appreciated punny jokes with me, which are one of my favorite things on this earth. Don’t mind me showering him with compliments, I had no other guys to give my attention to.
One time, I complimented him by saying, “Hey, Hotty, that shirt is a nice color on you!” It was a plain collared shirt, I’ll let you guess the color. I mean it was nice, but it wasn’t that nice. He could have been wearing a paper bag and I would have made the same comparison. I kid you not, he responded with, “Thanks, I agree.” I should have run when I had the chance, but sixteen-year-old me had other plans.
Okay, so where do I begin? Well, he was a year younger than me, so I didn’t meet him until my sophomore year, which is comical because we went to the same middle school and I didn’t know until I randomly saw him in an old yearbook. We met in chemistry— quite iconic considering the connotation in the mass media. He sat behind me.
I think it is the coolest thing how crushes start: you’re in someone’s presence for a very long time and suddenly you notice them, like really notice them, for the first time and that’s it, they’re stuck on your mind and the feelings build from there.
Anyway, we talked a little, but my nerves got the best of me, so I couldn’t really immerse with him like I wanted to. He was a funny guy nonetheless, he cracked jokes a lot, and I just laughed because they were at the expense of our teacher and her methods.
She once made us watch ice melt for thirty minutes and then record our findings. I also convinced her to let us watch a kids "educational" TV show instead of taking a test because “The class wasn’t prepared.”
Anyway, after the first semester, Hotty had to leave. He had a health condition, and it was taken care of, but he wasn’t put back in my class period for the rest of the year. In my junior year, we had no classes together, but our fifth periods were across from each other, so I often walked behind him to class or vice versa. We had a mutual friend named Ryker, more my friend than his. One day, the three of us were walking to class together and I wasn’t engaging in the conversation. Ryker, the middleman, knew I liked Hotty, so he tried to get me involved in the conversation. So, at a silent pause, he said, “Hey, Waverly.”
How a conversation was supposed to spur from that, I have no idea. I was so nervous, I said, “Hey (insert the first half of my crushes name).” I was so freaked, I stopped talking and looked at the floor.
My friend then looked at me and said, “What did you say? I didn’t hear you.”
I corrected it by saying, “I said, hey Ryker.” There was another pause. The two boys had this inside joke where Hotty called Ryker, Rico Sauve. Boys are weird.
So, Hotty looked at me with a smirk and said, “His name is Rico Sauve.”
To which I responded, “Oh, hey Rico,” as we walked into our respective classrooms. My notch of awkwardness is way too high to be socially acceptable, I guess I was supposed to laugh or something.
Before I continue, that previous conversation was not crucial to the story, but I just wanted you to remember that there’s someone out there (that would be me) who’s worse at flirting or holding a proper conversation than you are. Unless you’re worse, in that case, we can raise the twenty-two kids together.
Fast forward to towards the end of the year. My best friend’s birthday was coming up. We were at lunch, my group sat at a picnic table near the History building every single day, and his group of friends always passed by. My friend’s birthday is on the 28th of May and she was trying to convince me that it was the 29th. We just started joking about dates and asking random people which date sounded better. When his friends walked by, she yelled, “Hey, twenty-eight or twenty-nine?” They all said twenty-eight and I was triumphant.
He was lagging behind them, so I said, “Twenty-eight or twenty-nine?” He looked at me with a smile or grimace—who knows—and said twenty-nine to which I yelled in the moment, “Oh, come on!”
Later that lunch, he came back over with a friend, got my attention and said, “I change my mind, it’s twenty-eight.”
I screamed, “Thank you!”
Which is where he went wrong because now my interest had been respired. Hey, give me an inch and I’ll take a mile. A member of the male
species actually giving me attention, what a concept. A desperate one as I’m sure you can tell, but this is my journey to discovering that the answer is sometimes no, and I had to learn it young.
We did not have much interaction after that until the last two days of school. I often waited for my friend to walk with after that fifth period class, so I thought up the idea to say hi to Hotty. He walked out before my friend, usually, so he did, and I said, “Hey.” The first time he was a little far away, so he had to turn around to say it back. On the last day of junior year, he walked out, and I said, “Hey” again, the only word that summed up my extensive vocabulary.
This time, he stopped, turned and waved at me and said, “Hey, Waverly, how’s it going?” It was unexpected, and I can’t remember if I said good or nothing at all. He waited a beat longer and walked away.
Honestly, I question my basic conversation skills. Fast forward some more to my senior year. I was ready to end high school with a bang. I got my schedule, and I hated it— starting the year off on the wrong foot. I complained to my friend, Emma, about my especially terrible science class. She said I should switch to her class, it was a class I wanted to take and a college course. So, I went to the office and requested to get my schedule changed, which somehow worked out. On the fourth day of school, I sashayed into my new class and oh what an incentive, Hotty had that class too.
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