Crush

Watch this first.

(It's beautiful, and it's the reason I've decided that whenever I have to start reading my work in public, I will use a sock puppet to do it. Animation and puppetry-- and I firmly believe this-- allow us to be more honest about our emotions, and have more fun doing being that way. So the next time you have something difficult to say to your significant other, consider letting one of your socks or a stuffed animal do it.)

Significant/gruesome crushes:

First through sixth grade. His last name was Funk. Yes, Funk. He broke my ruler one day and then wrote me a note promising to get me a new one, "a see-through yellow one if I can find it. But if not, I will get you a pretty one!" At the end of the note, he suggested that I ask my mom if I can come over to his house some time. It never happened. In sixth grade he and this wretched girl Julia drew horns and warts on the school picture I'd given to Julia because we were still pretending to be friends at that point. I cried and thought about stabbing them both with my compass.

Seventh grade. My crush on Jason peters out when he starts to exhibit some of the gayness that will eventually lead him to tanning a Playboy bunny logo onto his hip in a tanning bed in college. I didn't recognize gayness at that point, just knew very clearly one day as I stared at his profile on the school bus that he would never love me. This was after I'd told all my friends that I was pretty sure what our kids would look like.

Eleventh grade (there's a big jump here because for some reason, in the 9th and 10th grades I ended up dating a few of my crushes, and the reality never lived up to the fantasy). I am enamored of a certain very, very hairy boy. I will later marry one of his best friends after having caught the bouquet at this boy's wedding. The sheer magnitude of behind-the-scenes seventeen-year-old angst is such that I am convinced the boy, and all of his friends, are capable of reading my thoughts scrolling across my forehead like a stock ticker. This enrages me, and so I scowl and retreat whenever he comes near. Wonder why it never worked out?

College. My Spanish Lit T.A. He had googly blue eyes, and, in the style of broke grad students everywhere, he never changed his jeans the whole semester. He made jokes in Spanish about eating only macaroni and raumen noodles, and so for a while, I thought of him whenever I ate raumen and imagined us sharing our high-sodium, low-cost feasts over guttering candlelight.

Post-college. I endure a killer three-week crush on a guy who tells me a great story about helping out at a gruesome wreck late at night on a flooded road. I try the patience of one of my best friends in all the world as I ask, over and over, if he's heard anything from this guy, and suggest whacky, creepy ways in which he could help me find information about the guy. In the end, the guy calls me once, stands me up, and then explains a month later that he got a job at a goat farm.

Pants. Wrenching. My brother's best friend. I think of him so much he shows up in my dreams, and in them, he refers to other dreams I've had over the years, like he's been in on it the whole time. I climb a 900 foot cliff to impress him, and the experience is so terrifying that I drop killer, acidic farts that waft up to him and make him wonder aloud if there's a dead animal nearby. He marries me.