A Couple of the Boys I've Loved Before

There's been a rash of True Confessions on the family blogs here and there so I thought I'd talk about puppy love for a bit. In third grade there was a guy who bought me a cookie while we were on a field trip at the bakery, and then in fourth grade, he chose me to be his folk-dance partner for a program on a day when I was absent. I was very flattered. I liked him because he was cute and he was kind of naughty. Hmmm...Another boy in elementary school I liked was his good buddy and taller than me, and that was his main attribute. He was really nice too, but tallness was an asset. The tall one eventually married a good friend of mine from high school and we are all still great friends, and we sometimes laugh about grade school. There weren't very many boys to have crushes on: there were only 17 kids in my school. We were the odd class they didn't have room for in the "town" school, so for K-5, I attended a one room school out in the farm area with these same kids. We changed teachers every year, and we moved up to the next grade together, but we mostly we were alone in the little building built by the WPA in 1939.

Then, for sixth grade, the little schools were all closed because the bigger one was completed in town, and for the first time I had more than 17 kids in my school. (Now, cue the slow-motion video, and the dramatic music...) there, in my classroom, sitting to the left of me, was a Really Cute Guy. He had sensational brown eyes, an awesome smile and--he read the dictionary for fun! Sadly, I was invisible. Actually, it wasn't so much that I was invisible as that I was somewhat out of sight, because he rarely had the occasion to tip his head back that far to look waaaayy up and see me there, towering over him. Our class photo shows me standing on the back row, a full head taller than the teacher, with him sitting on the front row, feet dangling above the floor without touching. I was a flagpole in sixth grade, and he hadn't started the growth spurt thing yet.

It didn't keep me from admiring his vocabulary or impressive manners, however. And every fact I thought I had exclusive rights to (from reading a large range of esoteric materials) seemed to be at his command. Hmmm...Plus he was really wild--he had a dirt bike! And he skiied. And he had amazing self-confidence and lots of friends. He also read naughty joke books, tucked into his lap, disguised by his social studies text propped up in front of him.

Naturally, I had none of these qualities, including the friends. Sixth grade was a tough year. I hadn't really had any friends in little school--lots of the girls there were related to each other, or were neighbors and I wasn't in the clique. But, I was determined to just join right in and make some friends in this new environment. I remember one snowy day when we had to stay inside for recess and I saw a group of girls over by the bookshelves chatting away, and I headed over to join in. As I approached, I heard them say, "Now, only girls who live on [a street near the school] can be our friends, except for Patty, cause she just moved, but she used to live there." So, I quickly pretended that my real errand was to pick out a dictionary just to the right of them. Not only did I NOT live on that street---I didn't even live in town. I lived seven miles south of town on a farm. Talk about wrong side of the tracks---I was on the wrong side of the barnyard.

But, there were two boys in our class with whom I developed awesome friendships, and they stayed my loyal friends for years after high school. Brown-eyes wasn't one of them. But did I let that deter my devotion? Of course not! I continued my outrageous campaign for his acknowledgement of my existence throughout junior high. I made friends with all of his girl friends, I made friends with all of his buddies. Actually, my friendships with the boys was independent of their association with him. These guys were just fun and, somehow, I always had more friends that were boys than I had friends that were girls. I was much more comfortable with boys. I think it was because at the time, I was living more like a boy than a girl. At home, I milked the cows twice a day, fed cattle, cleaned the barn, and in the summers hauled hay with my sisters. When I was 13 my dad gave me the colt born that spring and I spent two years training him. So, maybe I felt more compatible with boys because I wasn't doing my nails and hair and talking on the phone at home every night.

Except that I did use the phone to sigh and discuss Brown-Eyes with whichever sort-of "girlfriend" of his I'd befriended at the time. I really did like these girls. They turned out to be great friends, each one of them, and when his attention wandered off (as is the way of 14 year old boys) we remained good friends and so I did gain that benefit from my unrequited love.

I received a diary for my 13th birthday and faithfully wrote in it for a year. There are entries recounting every moment our lives intersected. Once, I recorded, that I got to write my name on a library card under his. Once, I sat behind him in an assembly that was a movie, so the room was darkened---ooohh---almost romantic. One extremely memorable time was dance class that was in lieu of gym every Wednesday in seventh grade. We usually learned folk dances like "Oh, Johnny, Oh" and square dances. I really liked dance class because the dances were fun. I'd learned most of them from my fourth grade teacher in the little school because she put on a full-blown program for every holiday--even Columbus Day--with singing, dancing, recitations, and costumes. (Good grief---I grew up as Laura Ingalls Wilder...)

Anyway...dance class in gym. Four girls formed each square. The boy foursomes rotated with each chorus to the next group of four girls. My failure to be in any obvious clique resulted in my being one of the leftovers and I was grouped with three other oddball girls, so that, by contrast, I was the "cool" one. Sigh...junior high is a cruel, cruel environment. When Brown-eyes and his three friends saw that we were next, they all got down in a track stance, for the "race" to be my partner. Brown-eyes won the race (I can still picture this) and grabbed me by the waist and twirled me around saying "I got you, my love!" Which, interpreted that day meant, "Whew....I don't have to dance with [the girl whose mother made her wear little zipped up overshoes with furry tops] or [the fat one who has bad skin and squinty eyes and weird hair] or....you get it. BUT...despite my understanding the hyperbole of his exclamation, it meant everything to me that, for four minutes, I could hold his hand and do-si-do and bow next to him. They raced off to the next square with just as much enthusiasm.

He was the perpetrator of my Most Humilating Moment of Science Class that year, too. We had science first period and he and my So-Called friends snatched my purse off my desk and went up to the front of the room to dump it out and investigate the contents. There wasn't much to see: Avon lipstick samples, a comb, some Certs and---my Little Book from Health Class. Which he immediately opened and pretended to read, saying with each page, "Oh, this is interesting, oh, look at this, oh, really, hmmm...."

I tried snatching the purse back, but one of the friends was even taller than me (a miracle) and held it over his head, and after they dumped it out, I didn't think I'd be able to go on living because of the mortification at having the Little Book being displayed for all to see. At that point in life I had not yet started needing any of the Kimberly-Clark products they discussed in the Little Book, but the mere fact of them displaying to all the world, or at least my Science class, that I was an actual girl with a uterus and a vagina as illustrated was so embarrassing I can't believe I didn't die. I did start to cry however, and asked the science teacher (one of my mother's many, many cousins) to make them give back my things. Which of course he did. As the years go by, I realize now that I was probably the last to know, in that group of kids (including the boys) that I possessed a uterus and a vagina and why.