Crushes

I took Ray-Ray and little D to their elementary school for an open house last night. They met their teachers and found their desks. Ray has had a crush on a little girl in his grade for two years and he found out that she is in his class this year. He got the butterflies thinking about it. Last year, he talked about her all the time and whenever she passed him in the halls, his brain froze and he couldn't think and his stomach got jumpy. There was another boy that also liked her and to show it he would try to chase her on the playground and hug her. Ray told me all about it. About how it made him mad, and jealous, and about how he was too shy to try to hug her too. So instead, he appointed himself as her defender and would shove the boy away and stop him from hugging her.

I didn't notice boys much until the 3rd grade. The boys chased us way out in the soccer field (far from the teachers) and tried to put us in jail so they could kiss us but usually we just ended up getting shoved around. By the time I was in the 5th grade, the local roller rink was the chosen venue for childhood crushes. The boys would buy the girls a plastic rose that lit up with a battery. The DJ would call your name over the speaker if a boy bought you a rose and then you'd couple skate together. It was a mandatory couple skate. I got a rose once from a boy I didn't really like in a couple skate way. I skated with him anyway, but what comes next? I didn't know.

By the 7th grade, I got my first big crush. And my first taste of jealousy. The boys and girls my age in our ward were tight. We'd get together to play tennis, go swimming, ride bikes, eat icecream, play night games and play Chocolate (a game involving a huge bar of Hershey's Chocolate, 2 pie tins, 2 butter knives, and dice). It was the time of my life that I would call "The Wonder Years" if I had to pick. Out of the boys in our group, I claimed Scott. I talked about him incessantly. I thought about him more than I talked about him. There was no mistaking who I was after and that is why I was so confused when my best friend Marcia told me that she was "going with" Scott and that she thought that I should "go with" Nathan so that I wasn't left out. I liked Nathan too, but he was a full head shorter than I and his calf was about half the size of mine. I never felt so mixed up and to prove it, I let Marcia arrange it with Nathan. I learned what you do when you "go with" someone. We'd give each other a little peck on the lips...until we watched (or rather looked then looked away) as Scott and Marcia made out in the alley. I felt jealousy and it was metallic. I couldn't peck anymore. We held hands at school...until someone said it looked like I was walking my little brother to his class. We'd hang out with each other until my big brother Hartman made us stand back to back to measure us and see just how much taller I was. I couldn't take it. It was all too painful. I don't think Nathan could take it either.

By the time I was fourteen and was allowed to go to the church dances, I was a short guy eliminator. I would look over the crowd of kids and only dance with the boys that were a head taller than the rest. I wasn't too happy about the short girls either because they always tried to dance with the tall guys. Didn't they get that I was limited to a few select tall guys while they could choose from the whole crowd? Couldn't they leave the tall guys alone instead of reeling them in with their petite flirtiness? High School didn't get any better. I had a devastatingly painful crush on a tall boy for four years until he married a short girl. I remember getting to know Sorrow when I watched him kiss her on New Year's Eve.

Ray-Ray is already starting this adventure and he's only in 2nd grade. I guess if having that girl in his class makes him excited about going to school then I am happy. But what about when his poor little Rilkean heart gets broken?