Friday, November 23, 2007

Coming To One’s Senses Is A Difficult Thing

A few days ago I mentioned that I’d be telling the story of my crush on Monika Heinritz. The time has come.

In most ways I’m sure my crush on her wasn’t out of the ordinary in any way. I was of “that age” in junior high when I started to notice girls as creatures worthy of my attention in ways besides overt loathing simply because they might be carrying deadly cootie spores. I fell hard for her seconds after seeing her in 7th grade science class.

Obviously, since I was only in 7th grade and had no practical experience with this sort of thing, I was pretty confused. I didn’t understand the feelings I was having and I certainly didn’t know how to go about expressing myself. I only knew that I wanted to hang around her as much as possible and the thought of her hanging around me was almost more than I could bear, so powerful were those emotions.

This being me I’m discussing, I did my level best to try and ingratiate myself into her life. I somehow, miraculously ended up in the same classes as her and even though most classes had students organized alphabetically, I would worm my way into sitting next to her. Magic, I was.

I’m also quite sure that one of the sole reasons why I was in excellent shape was from having ridden my bike to and from her house about a thousand times. I used to ride by in hopes of catching glimpse of her or having her stop me to say hello.

Obsession? Perhaps. Stalking? I can see how one might come to that conclusion. Let me just say for the record that though I was exhibiting some “stalker-like” characteristics, it’s not like I was waiting around for her to leave the house, just so I could be seen. Well, maybe just that once.

Which is when I learned that in reality she lived a couple doors down and I’d been stalking the wrong house for a few weeks/months. Ah the follies of youth and misprinted school directories.

So I liked her. A lot. And I had liked her for a while. She didn’t have any boyfriends, although she had a ton of male friends, most of whom would have quite enjoyed moving into the “boyfriend” category. Now that I think back on it more, I wonder if maybe she wasn’t interested in boys at all in “that way” and she in fact, she played for the “other team.” But I kind of doubt it. I think she was just kind of picky.

Anyway, one day in the middle of eighth grade, I decided that I’d ridden my bike in circles around her block enough times and IT WAS TIME. It was about time that I let her know how I felt and ask her to a dance. Or something. I didn’t know, I just knew that I would quite possibly explode if I didn’t let her know that I adored her.

So I wrote out some lines for myself on a pad of paper and practiced them until I knew them al by heart. I didn’t plan out her lines, but I figured that once I had my opening down, the rest might follow. I was wrong of course, but I did did have a ton of “filler” material in case I came up empty at some point.

One day after school, we both stayed after for some extra-curricular activity. Yes, I’m certain that whatever club or activity it was, I was truly only there in order to be close to her. Pathetic, but I figured I was being more crafty than creepy. If she’d been in underwater BB staking, I’d have gotten myself a snorkel and a wet suit as quickly as I could have.

We were walking back to our lockers and I tapped her on the shoulder and asked if I could talk to her for a minute.

I hemmed and hawed in a display of supreme teenage awkwardness, with my hands in my pockets and finally said, “There is something I have to tell you.”

“OK.”

“It’s taken me a long time to come up with what I want to say, but I just need to tell you this.”

“OK. I think I know what it is.”

She knew! How could she have known? I was dumbfounded, although in retrospect, perhaps she might have seen me out her window as I rode my bike past her house one of those 18 million times. I was completely thrown off my game, especially since the look on her face was one of pity, mixed with sadness.

I knew at that moment that all my courage and resourcefulness wasn’t going to do me any good. She didn’t like me in “that way” and to go any further was just going to be incredibly humiliating, even more that it already had been for the 6.7 minutes we’d been standing there as I shuffled back and forth and shifted my weight between my feet.

So I bailed on the “express my truest feelings” quest and went straight for “let’s just be friends.”

“Yeah, look. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and I just want to tell you something.”

Approximately 45 minutes pass, although in reality, it was only twelve seconds or so. It just felt like 45 minutes to an hour and change.

“I just wanted to tell you that I like you. And I want to be your friend.”

I said the first part really fast in order to get it out there as quickly as I could, and the last half so quickly you’d have thought my voice was a gazelle being chased by a cheetah on the savannah.

“Aw, that’s very sweet of you, Jon. I want to be your friend as well.”

It was possibly the lamest and most oblique and fumblingly cumbersome “Hey, I like you, maybe we could hang out as boyfriend and girlfriend” conversations ever in the history of those sorts of painfully obtuse conversations. And it didn’t even end with a “yes” or “no,” I got to “let’s just be friends” all on my own.

In the end, we really were pretty decent friends, although I suspect she always knew that I had stronger feelings for her than she did for me. There is a part of me that regrets not ever having said my real peace; I should have just gone ahead and gotten it out there. After all, I done the hard part; getting up the courage to say how I felt, I should have just said what I came to say, damn the torpedoes. If you are going to make a fool of yourself, make sure it’s the biggest fool of yourself you can make.

Though in many ways, I’m still that fidgety, emotionally clumsy kid who should probably be more open with my feelings, I can’t help but think, “you know, sometimes it’s good to aware enough of what’s happening and not just plunge ahead with your plans.”

Jon scribbled this mess on 11/23/07 at 09:04 PM, best we can tell it fits in the category of Regular Post. This many folks had something to say about that, The permanent home of this entry is here: Link

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