Crush

He sat next to me in history. I looked forward to history because I knew I’d get to sit by him.

When he was thinking, he’d take the eraser end of his pencil and rub it against the back of his neck, pushing it up into his hairline. Then when the answer came to him, he’d bring the pencil to the paper and write in the neatest hand writing I’d ever seen… for a boy.

He wasn’t like the other boys. He didn’t do stupid things to get attention. He was polite, and sweet…… and cute.

Toward the middle of the school year I got the courage to write him a note. We passed the same narrow ruled piece of loose leaf paper back and forth through most of the class.

It’s been a while since I opened my Precious Moments keepsake box, but this morning I decided to take a trip down memory lane. Underneath a hand made book mark that reads, “I *heart* Michael Jackson, was THE note. It reads:

Me: Why do you always look down or away when I talk to you?

Him: I don’t know. Do I?

Me: Yup. You do. Why?

Him: I’m not very good at talking to girls. I don’t know.

Me: I won’t bite you.

Him: Hahaha. You’re funny. I do look at you when you talk. You have one eye that’s part brown.

Me: I notice everything about you.

Him: Really? Like what.

Me: You push your pencil into your hair in the back when you’re thinking. Your shoes are always clean. You have the neatest handwriting I’ve ever seen for a boy. You never doodle on the outside of your notebooks. I could go on and on.

Him: You twirl your hair all the time. I notice that. You’re the nicest girl I know.

That was the end of class. I folded the note and put it into my pocket. All day I was on cloud nine knowing he noticed me and that he thought I was the nicest girl he knew. I would keep THAT note forever. It was the start of something.

That was the first of many notes between us that year. We got to know each other pretty well through our note passing in history class. My crush on him grew, but I never had the courage to tell him that I liked him as more than a friend.

Freshman year things changed. We didn’t have any classes together and I started dating a boy that was a Senior. Every time we saw each other in the halls we’d smile at each other, but we never really talked any more. We went our seperate ways.

More than 20 years later I’m holding that note in my hands. Looking at his perfect handwriting takes me back to 8th grade history class and the butterflies I felt sitting next to him.

I wonder where he is now, and if he still pushes his pencil into the back of his hairline when he thinks.