Coffee Table Declarations
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
When I was eleven a boy in my class had a crush on me. I knew this because his friend told me and because I would catch him looking at me across the room, and I would see him start to blush when our eyes met. This was all a big deal to me because I was shy and awkward and book-wormish and to the best of my knowledge, had never before been the object of anyone's desire. So after making sure that I could trust his intentions (a couple of weeks went by and he still seemed to like me as fervently as ever) I started to like him back. All of my youthful fantasies were pinned on the upcoming end of the year dance. I expected we would end up dancing and then have a passionate romance of sitting together in the cafeteria and holding hands on the bus, or whatever an eleven year old envisions a passionate romance consisting of.
The day of the dance I looked really good, far exceeding mid-eighties middle school appearance expectations. The important thing was I felt good. However, after a little while of sitting and waiting, it started to slowly dawn on me that he wasn't going to ask me to dance. In fact, it was strange how he kept dancing with another girl in our class. Song after song went by and the boy who supposedly liked ME repeatedly danced with someone else. At one point I even overheard a comment made by one of the other boys about the seemingly happy couple, along the lines of "woo hoo, check them out!"
Finally I approached the boy's friend. "I thought you said he liked me," I said. I was sure there was some logical explanation for this sudden turn of events. "He did, but now he likes her," he replied matter-of-factly as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I stood there, watching the boy who was supposed to be my passionate romance, dancing with someone else and I wondered, not for the last time in my life, how boys can be so fickle. One minute they are blushing at you across the classroom and the next, you find your toothbrush in a box of empty promises while they're off chasing after the next shiny thing that happens to catch their eye.
The day of the dance I looked really good, far exceeding mid-eighties middle school appearance expectations. The important thing was I felt good. However, after a little while of sitting and waiting, it started to slowly dawn on me that he wasn't going to ask me to dance. In fact, it was strange how he kept dancing with another girl in our class. Song after song went by and the boy who supposedly liked ME repeatedly danced with someone else. At one point I even overheard a comment made by one of the other boys about the seemingly happy couple, along the lines of "woo hoo, check them out!"
Finally I approached the boy's friend. "I thought you said he liked me," I said. I was sure there was some logical explanation for this sudden turn of events. "He did, but now he likes her," he replied matter-of-factly as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I stood there, watching the boy who was supposed to be my passionate romance, dancing with someone else and I wondered, not for the last time in my life, how boys can be so fickle. One minute they are blushing at you across the classroom and the next, you find your toothbrush in a box of empty promises while they're off chasing after the next shiny thing that happens to catch their eye.
