Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Elementary School Romance

I had two major crushes in elementary school.

The first one was on a boy named Josh. I first developed feelings for Josh in kindergarten when we sat at the same table. What was it about Josh that made that crush last all the way until the third grade? Well, aside from being really nice, he was absolutely hilarious!

I still remember one day when I said jokingly, “Anyone who’s sitting by Josh has cooties.” Instead of getting angry or vengeful, as 5 year olds are prone to do when accused of having cooties, he proceeded to point at each person at our table and said with a big smile, “You’re sitting by me, and you’re sitting me and you’re sitting by me.” I laughed hysterically! He was so clever! Of course we were all sitting by him because the table consisted of 4 desks that had been pushed together to form a square. So there was someone sitting across from him, next to him and diagonal from him. We all had cooties and I couldn’t be happier.

In first grade I decided the time had come to tell Josh how I felt about him. I mustered up as much courage as my little first grade heart could manage and I wrote him a note:


“Dear Josh,

I love you.

Love,

Jaela”


I crumpled the note into a ball and left it on his chair, then waited in complete and utter trepidation for him to open it. Any moment now and he would know.

But the moment never came. When he got back to his seat and saw the balled up note he assumed it was trash and flicked it onto the floor.

At some point that year something strange and unexpected happened. Another classmate, named Greg, turned to me in the middle of class, looked me in the eye and said, “Do you love me?”

I stared at him in shock. I could not believe he was asking me this! I didn’t know what to say or how to react. Finally, in a moment of confusion, I blurted out, “yes,” and we both went back to our school work as if nothing had happened.

Regardless of that rather jolting encounter with Greg, I was still pining for Josh.

In the third grade someone from church gave me a miniature picture of Jesus in a plastic picture frame, with a stand. I brought it to school and displayed in on my desk. Josh came by my desk one day, picked up the picture, looked at it and then put it back down. I wished I could put Josh’s picture in that little frame, but I knew that would never happen.


One day a half-Japanese classmate, named Summer, came up to me to share some news. I mention her race for one reason and one reason only: If you’ve ever met a half-Japanese girl you know they’re inherently beautiful. It’s basically a law of nature. Summer was no exception.

“Guess what!” she gushed. “Josh gave me roses and a poem that said, ‘Roses are read, violets are blue. Your name is Summer and I love you!” Summer didn’t know anything about my feelings for Josh and I wasn’t about to tell her.

“Wow!” I smiled and gasped. “That’s so exciting!” Then I walked away, totally crushed.

I don’t have any memories of Josh after that. It might be because when you’re a kid a broken heart last all of 30 seconds, or it might be because he moved away. Either way, by fourth grade I had my eye on someone else and that someone was none other than Greg– the very boy who asked me if I loved him in first grade. You’ll find out by the end of this story just how ironic it is that I said “Yes.”

So how did Greg finally capture my attention? He did it the same way Josh had– He made me laugh.

I teased Greg in class, telling him (amid giggles) that I liked him and then taking it back a second later. I don’t know how it finally became official, but at some point that year he became my boyfriend.

When his birthday rolled around I wanted to get him a gift. So I did what any 9 year old would do and I bought him a...book?

We were reading The Great Brain in class and he said he liked it. Since I was the kind of girl who paid attention to the things her man said he liked, it seemed The Great Brain II was the obvious choice for his gift.

I asked my dad to take me to the bookstore. They didn’t have The Great Brain II so I special ordered it. When it finally arrived I bought it and gave it to Greg. I also bought him some Now and Later candies but he never got them. I got hungry and ate them before I had a chance to give them to him.

Later, Greg gave me a ring that his sister had discarded. I slipped it on my finger and admired the way it looked on my hand. When I got home I showed my mom who said, “Maybe we can find a jewel to go in the prongs.” You see, the ring was bent, rusty and missing its jewel. I had hardly noticed.

One day I decided I wanted to kiss Greg on the cheek. I came up with a plan. I would tell him that I needed to tell him a secret, then when I got close in order to “whisper in his ear” I would kiss him on the cheek instead. Everything went as planned until I got to the whisper part. Then I chickened out and aborted ship. It wasn’t until fifth grade that I finally got to kiss him and not just on the cheek.

Greg lived down the street from me, but we normally didn’t see each other outside of school. One of my neighborhood friends was friends with his little sister, though, and one day we all ended up on his porch.

For some reason his little sister was determined to see us kiss. In fact, she demanded we kiss without delay. We weren’t opposed to the idea, but every time we tried we would start laughing before our lips touched.

Any time I would show signs of giving up, Greg insisted that we had to because his sister wanted us to (sly Greg, real sly). I don’t know how many tries it took before we actually succeeded, but eventually we did.

Sadly, all grade school romances must come to an end. I knew that time had come for me and Greg when my friend told me, “My mom says when you’re in love with someone you don’t have to ask yourself you just know it.” I gasped. I wasn’t in love with Greg! For some reason I thought I couldn’t be his girlfriend if I wasn’t in love with him, so I did the noble thing and had one of my friends break up with him for me.

Greg did not take the break up well, but luckily he went on to make some other girl happy in high school. I know because even though we went to different high schools, his girlfriend went to my high school and we became friends. She told me all about their relationship bliss and I was happy for them.

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