to all the boys...

...I loved, liked, or kicked in the shins because my feelings confused me

Because of this Strange Made-up Holiday Supposedly About Love, I’m reminiscing about some¹ past heterosexual infatuations for fun today.

• 1st grade (1974) : I fell in love with Jim Hendricks (I know, but I didn’t then), a cute older boy (6th grader I think, because he was never on the same bus as me after that year). All I remember is his sweet smile and that he was shorter, thus kinder in my 6-year old mind, than the other boys he hung out with at The Back of The Bus. I don’t know if any of this is accurate other than the smile, which later made me think he looked like Brandon Cruz from The Courtship of Eddie’s Father but that could also not be at all true. When I later discovered Jimi Hendrix, I already had a good feeling about him because of the name².

• 4th grade (1977-78) : Lyle - can we please appreciate for a minute a 9-year old kid in a small Navy town with that name? - was also short and had a sweet smile PLUS dimples. He was impishly funny but mostly dismissive of me, probably because I was a know-it-all who routinely challenged his place as Smartest Kid In Class, yet still I wrote his name in my notebooks.

• 5th grade (1978-79) : I realized early in the year that I really liked Mark O. even though, like Lyle, he very much did not approve of me being at least as smart he was. But that year was the beginning of my lifelong pursuit of Unattainables - boys who either actively disliked me or were simply out of my realm of existence.³ Then Mark beat me in our class spelling bee, which I could handle but he mocked me relentlessly for the word I misspelled⁴ so I quickly moved on. To Peter Criss, via my quiet sweater-wearing metalhead classmate Jim Durham who introduced me to KISS after I helped him with math. He didn’t love that my only purchase after the introduction was “Beth” on 45 but he was still kind to me.
  

  This was also the year a kid in my class left a heart-shaped box of chocolates at my front door on Valentine’s Day. It was a confusing event for me because a) we never used our front door so it took a minute to figure out where the knocking was coming from and b) no one was there when I finally answered and c) boys other than Mark O., Duran Duran’s John Taylor, Peter Criss, and Shaun Cassidy were suspect & unwelcome. Charlie Brown,⁵ a Generic Boy On My Bus, asked me the next day if I liked his gift; I was surprised because he was completely off my radar as a possible admirer. In fact, I was pretty sure he thought my friends & I were jerks⁶ and that the chocolates might be poisoned or otherwise contaminated. I have blocked out my actual response to him because I’m 1000% certain it was ungracious, at best. And we never spoke again, unfortunately.

• 6th grade (1979-80) : In a nutshell, I watched Grease, heard about Fast Times At Ridgemont High, and decided I needed to “go with”⁷ a couple of boys who fought over me for some reason. Shout out to Ricky and Randy⁸ for the dedication.

• Junior high (1980-83) : This was the era of bruising boys’ shins by kicking them when they gave me [possibly sincere] compliments. Apologies especially to Jay Jones, a frequent target - long-legged in foxy James Jeans, with his Leif Garrett hair and sleepy sexy eyes; I was terrified that he might actually like me and THEN WHAT?? Inflicting pain seemed to be the best response.
  
  However, my best friends⁹ & I did create a rating system for boys (also maybe some girls?) that we used until graduation. Based mainly on looks but with allowance given to kindness & basic decency, we used the letters A-J, which directly corresponds to #1-10 but no one ever seemed to figure it out.
  
  For all three years of junior high, I was madly in [chaste] love with Linus¹⁰ and thought he also liked me - I wrote him cute notes, dotting my ‘i’s with hearts, while he made me pop-up cards from construction paper and gave me a bracelet with my name on it. But in 9th grade he danced to all the slow songs with another girl while I cried in the bathroom. Then he moved away.¹¹

• High school (1983-86) : I am proud of Teen Me for becoming a bit more confident¹² during this era, though I still did not have an actual boyfriend¹³ until the end of Senior year. In retrospect + having attended all of my reunions, this is overall fine. I pined over a bunch of upperclassmen, one who looked so much like Tom Cruise it was unnerving¹⁴ and another in my Algebra II class who turned out to be exceedingly creepy.
  
  There was a prolonged incident involving a friend & I calling the Safeway pay phone and starting a months-long fake virtual relationships with the boys who decided to answer, one of whom I did develop a real crush on; we even slow danced once the next year but then I felt compelled to reveal how I knew him. If things had ended better, it would make a cute Netflix movie.

• College (1986-89)¹⁵ : During my freshman year, the Internet was in its infancy - meaning War Games-esque message boards in small dark computer rooms, and there I chatted at all hours with half a dozen [presumed] dudes around the world, though a few were right across campus. Eventually I met up with a flirty one who reminded me of Mike D from Beastie Boys and, well, that’s where I’ll end this story.¹⁶
  
  Because I would do anything that year to meet cute guys/avoid doing actual school work, my friends & I would trek to the dining hall farthest from our dorm for dinner and late night snacks. I would often see a guy I started calling Richard Dreyfuss because of his serious grad student TA handsomeness + dash of mischief in his eyes. I became obsessed interested, but never enough to actually speak to him¹⁷ so this story ends here for real.

  

  Representation of all the boys.

  I encountered an embarrassing number of mostly Mikes, Marks, and Daves before eventually meeting the guy who would become my 1st [and hopefully only] husband. He was a freshman when I was a junior; he did not want A Girlfriend so I hung out as A Girl Friend until he relented was ready a few years later. He’s never had the Leif Garrett hair but everything else about him is just right: He looks cute in J. Crew jeans, makes me cards and brings me chocolates (unpoisoned), and I rarely have to kick him. Definitely a J.

  

  Possibly the nerdiest graduation swag ever, but definitely one of the reasons I married this guy.

  ---

1. A few names are made up but most of you know who you are. (Actually I’m pretty sure you’re not reading this. Except my for-real husband…hi, babe).

2. That my Jim Hendricks was a [maybe] short white kid who as far as I knew had no musical talent mattered zero percent; they were both beloved idols.

3. See my first Pretend Husband in 5th grade, John Taylor from Duran Duran

4. foreign #smh

5. Made up, to be clear.

6. Honestly, we were; I owe a lot of people apologies. I finally ditched the mean girls in junior high, with much sweaty fear of being targeted by their popular big brothers, but thankfully that never happened.

7. We smiled directly at each other, held hands at recess, and announced to everyone that we were going together; I wrote their names in notebooks [names in notebooks was a very big deal for me] and listened dreamily to love songs after school until bedtime. They were an intense few days.

8. Not only their real names but Randy is still a friend who likes to tell people we had “an affair” in 6th grade.

9. The new not-mean girls; we never told anyone if they were below an F.

10. Not his real name... He didn’t carry around a blanket but he was very smart + adorable.

11. Though we are friends on Facebook now! We have so far discussed nothing of the past.

12. I wore legwarmers one time, as they exited popularity; I always flipped my collars; and I got contacts. Check out my OG blog post revisiting journal entries from those years...

13. Unless we count the Canadian boy I went to movies & Seattle Center with a few times over two years. And I think I will - I named a teddy bear after Shane; no other regular person in my life has earned this honor.

14. I surreptitiously took a picture of him at his graduation and can still feel my clammy hands & racing heart from that moment. I’m entirely certain he has no idea to this day who I am.

15. I was in college a lot longer but started dated the guy who became my Real Husband in 1989, so everyone after that is just a Potential 2nd Husband to be featured in other posts.

16. However, that guy is from a town very close to where I live now and I often find myself scanning crowds with a peculiar combination of dread & fascination.

17. I got to meet Richard Dreyfuss last year and kept myself from bringing up this fever dream story. I think it would only make him very glad he didn’t know me in 1987.