Why must these neurons be re-awoken? Oh well. Starting in grade school, I had a furious typhoon-level crush on one of the girls in my grade. At the time, I had no idea what was happening to me. I stared for hours at her class photo, typed her name repeatedly in white text on a white screen so no one could see (I don't think anyone ever walked in on me doing this, which would have looked pretty strange), wrote her name on sheets of paper then crumpled them up and threw them away so no one would find them, and just had a pretty unhealthy obsession with her from afar. I seriously had no idea what was going on because I never really had a "birds and bees" talk from my parents, so I just thought I was crazy and kept my impending insanity to myself. If she passed me in the hall my heart stopped and I literally felt short of breath and anxious to the point of imploding. This went on for about 7 years and it was awful.
My brother and her brother were in the same grade and often played sports on the same team. So once our families traveled together on a tournament and we were staying in the same hotel. She said she was going to go swimming and I remember going to a window overlooking the pool to catch a glimpse of her in her swimsuit. On the way to the pool, I remember asking myself "why do I want to see her in her swimsuit? What's wrong with me?" In any case, she wasn't there and I never got my "glimpse." As time went on, we ended up being in class together only one or two more times, but I still saw her in the halls. When she was alone she would say "hello" to me, but if she was with any of her friends she completely ignored me, which I found pretty insulting and took as a sign that I was an embarrassment to her. But I kept on liking her beyond comprehension anyway. Nothing broke that spell.
Once in junior high a friend and I were "crank-calling" people and I told him "my secret." So he of course immediately looked up her number and called her without telling me. Then he handed me the phone and there she was on the other end saying "hi." I recognized her voice immediately and I'm pretty sure I wanted to vomit. Cryptically, she said "yes, you can draw me pictures, I don't mind." And I had no idea what she was talking about and so, hardly able to speak, I managed to grunt "no, that's fine, I don't want to bother you" and hung up. My friend said that he told her that I "had liked her for three years" and she responded "I know." I used to draw a lot and my friend apparently asked her if she wanted me to draw pictures for her. So that explained what she said. I wondered "how the %$%@% did she know that I liked her? I never told anyone, especially not her!"
Another time in High School a few guys were discussing who they thought was "hot," and I said her name. One of them shot back instantly, "her? She's flat!" I remember being furious and thinking "what difference does that make?" but I had been "shamed" in front of the guys, so I said nothing and just sat there and fumed. Time passed and she became more and more popular and I became so unpopular that I almost completely disappeared. I think before I graduated her and I passed each other in the halls alone maybe two or three times. As always, she said "hello" to me only if she was all by herself. We were even in two classes together but she never said a word to me in class. I grew to resent it a bit. I thought "why say hi to me at all? Just ignore me." That was all of the interaction that we had. Those moments are still implanted on my memory. Then I graduated.
I remember looking through my final High School yearbook the summer after I graduated and her picture appeared all over the place. I appeared only once and nowhere else. No one signed my yearbook and I had talked to no one from my class. As I turned the pages, there she was with her prom date, in her skimpy sports outfits, at dances and with groups of friends having a great time. At some point I threw the yearbook in a dumpster.
Then something strange happened. I started working at a nearby mall that same summer and girls from my grade, even once popular girls, started coming into the store and saying hi to me. I didn't get it. They would make a beeline to me, say hello, along with my name, and leave. This was very confusing to me because these same people hadn't acknowledged my existence all throughout my entire school years and suddenly, only a few months since graduation, they wanted to talk to me. I just said "hi" back, but I never said their names. I probably seemed cold. My theory at the time was that they didn't want to "let go" of High School so they were clutching on to whatever morsels remained and I was easy manipulable bait. I didn't want to contribute to their coping mechanism, especially since I was once invisible to them, so I just grew angry at them and gradually they stopped showing up at the store. I of course have no idea if my theory was correct.
A few years later, in college and working part-time at a local television station, almost an hour from where I went to High School, I went to lunch through a sky way to a nearby food court. Out of the blue, someone said my name. I looked up and thought "no, it can't be" and she said her name and it was her, the long hard crush standing in front of me. That little familiar heart stoppage reappeared and it took me a moment to compose myself. Her boyfriend was playing in a club that evening in the mall and she was there helping him set up. I told her where I was working and she became enthusiastic, saying "I love that channel!" Then she looked me up and down, head to toe, and said "you've really changed since graduation." Sadly, I took this the same way that I earlier took the girls coming to talk to me at the store. And all of those times she ignored me in the halls at school came rushing back. But now, ah, now I'm good enough to talk to! Bulging with immaturity, I don't think I was an outright jerk to her, but, sadly, I don't think I was excessively friendly to her, either. I remember wanting to get away from her, so I walked off and I never saw her again. I have no idea what happened to her. Thinking about her still gives me a little sizzle.