LOVE...... EXCITING AND NEW......

Pin It My husband keeps telling me that I should write about my own hopeless crush, but the sheer volume of crushes I talked myself into makes that almost impossible. I think I had a crush on someone every year of my life, almost always with semi-tragic results - a tradition that kicked off with Michael in the fifth grade.

I was such a boy crazy freak. I don't know where it came from. Maybe too much Love Boat. (Disturbing fact: back in the day I thought Gopher was "so fine." GOPHER.) (shudder)

When I was twenty I fell madly in love with one of my best friends and spent the next year covertly trying to make him fall in love with me. When that didn't work, I wrote him a long passionate letter explaining how I felt. He wrote me back - a very sweet note, saying that he loved me as a friend, but gently letting me know that it was not happening - now or ever. I read it, cried over it, then decided the note obviously contained hidden meaning. Instead of it meaning that he was not in love with me, which is what it said, it actually could be interpreted to mean that he was TOTALLY in love with me and if I waited around long enough, ALL OF MY DREAMS WOULD COME TRUE. It was all in how you looked at it, really.

I decided that what I really needed to do was step it up to the next level (the level of being completely insane). I repeatedly demanded that he participate in long conversations all about why he couldn't just go ahead and fall in love with me because DUH, it was SUCH A GREAT IDEA. I was pretty sure I could eventually convince him to fall in love with me if I was persistent enough.

Me: But we're so perfect for each other.
Him: I like you a lot, but I don't like you in that way. Please, please stop it.
Me: OK. I get it. I do.
Me: But probably I should ask you again next week, right?
Him: (jams pencil into his brain)

One late night I went to the home of the bishop of my YSA ward (translation: leader of a church congregation for young single people). When he opened his front door I was standing there crying my eyes out. He invited me in, obviously thinking there had either been a) a murder or b) some kind of spiritual crisis I urgently needed to discuss.

I told him I had a terrible, terrible problem that only he could help me with, and that I really needed to talk to him RIGHT that second. He invited me into his family room, where I told him (between sobs) that my life was over, it was OVER, because my crush didn't love me back and never would, and he was seeing someone, and how would I ever get over this, and what oh what oh what should I DO?

You should've seen the look on his face. That poor man. (Being the bishop of a singles ward must totally suck.)

I have to hand it to him - he did give the advice thing the old college try, telling me that the kind of love you have to convince someone to feel for you would never make you happy. This is probably where I should've had an epiphany and recognized the wisdom in what he said, but at the time, I just thought he was nuts. Because OF COURSE it would make me happy. It didn't matter how it happened, it just mattered that it happen.

If I'd been a Harry Potter character I totally would've been Romilda Vane, trying to make Harry mine by spiking his punch with love potion. As far as I was concerned the whole concept of free will was for suckers who weren't trying hard enough.

Man. I was nuts.

I Have a Statue of You In My Closet

Pin It The manuscript I'm currently trying to beat into submission (so that I can start the long process of having it simultaneously rejected by hundreds of literary agents) starts off with the heroine dragging a friend along to help her spy on the boy she's in love with. They hide in the bushes and watch in comically stalkerish dismay as the guy picks up his thin and pretty date for the evening.

Did you know there could be comically stalkerish dismay? Because there can. The reason I know this is that back in my (oh so wild and crazy) single days, my friend Becky* and I performed The Stalking not once, not twice, but THREE times.

Becky and I were really good friends. People said we were kind of nuts, which at the time we took to mean, "Aw, they are delightfully quirky and eccentric and cute." But really, looking back on it, I think mainly they just thought we were nuts.

Becky had an enormous crush on this cute guy we knew who I'll call, oh, I don't know, Mike.

Mike was tall and friendly and hilarious. If we'd lived anywhere near an ocean, he would've been a surfer. As it was, he was a wakeboarder and a snowboarder and he was seriously cute. If Becky hadn't had a crush on him, I'm sure I would have picked up the slack.

Becky and Mike went on a few dates, but eventually Mike's interest kind of waned. We all still hung out together, but he stopped asking her out. He would flirt with her, call her late at night and generally mess with her head, but he didn't want to actually go out with her.

You see the problem, right? Sadly, Mike was just not that into her. This was before that was actually a recognized condition though, so Becky and I spent many, many, many, many nights discussing where "this thing with Mike" was going. I empathized my heart out over the situation, partly because I was in the middle of my own never ending, totally doomed crush on a boy who just wasn't that into me, either. (Jerk.)

One night Mike invited a girl he was seeing, Katie, over to his house. He was going to cook dinner for her or something like that. Becky was seriously bummed so we went out for ice cream. Because eating more food? TOTALLY THE ANSWER TO OUR PROBLEMS.

Anyway, we were driving around that night and decided it would be a good idea to drive by his house. Just once. Just to see what was going on. I was pretty sure Mike wouldn't remember my car. I mean, he'd only seen it twenty or thirty times and it was a very inconspicuous, thirty year old, bright orange tank of a Volvo. We were practically in stealth mode.

We parked down the street from Mike's house. We slouched down in our seats, giggling, and watched the front door for a while but nothing really happened and after a while we got bored.

Becky was seized by the desire to just KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON. Something was undoubtedly going on. Our lives would obviously not be complete until we knew what it was. So we did the only thing that made any sense at all.

We snuck around into the back yard of the house behind his and peeked over the cinderblock wall.

(For the record, Mike's neighborhood was brand new. A lot of the houses were still being built, or were finished but empty. The house behind Mike's was not occupied. So we were trespassing, but only technically. Are you seeing how that makes it all better and marginally less disturbing?)

Unfortunately, the blinds were partly drawn and we couldn't really see much. I could kind of sort of see the top of Katie's head, but that didn't really give us much information, and did not help to contribute to the intelligence we were trying to gather re: why Katie and Mike were sure to break up any minute now, so that he could come to his senses and propose to Becky.

We debated jumping into the yard to check things out, but that seemed a little TOO stalkerish. (It was good that we had boundaries, don't you think?)

At this point we were laughing and egging each other on and just kind of having fun and being crazy(er). We went back out front and walked across the street and down a few houses, then laid down in the grass so that he wouldn't see us if he came outside. (Since the grass was approximately two inches long, I'm sure we were very nearly invisible. We were BRILLIANT.) We laid there and talked and laughed and laughed and laughed for at least an hour until the door to Mike's house opened and we ran shrieking down the street toward my car.

Yeah. I'm sure he didn't notice THAT.

We thought we were so clever, but really, two chubby blond girls running down the street toward an ancient orange Volvo? In retrospect I'm guessing it probably wasn't that hard for him to figure out who we were.

But he never said anything, as far as I know. And it turned a really crappy night into a really fun one. Mission accomplished.

Man. You have no idea how badly I want to link to Becky's blog right now, but I think if I did that, and outed her, she would kill me dead with a knife.

But I don't think she should be embarrassed. After all, I'm sure you've all stalked someone before. Right? RIGHT?

No?

Just me then?

Alrighty.

*I realized a little late that my friend might not actually be o.k. with my posting this story for the universe to see, so I've changed their names to protect their privacy.