Terribly Practical Even at 16, or How I Wanted to Crawl Under a Pew.

My Junior year of high school I was assigned a seat in English right in front of a moderately cute boy with a wicked sense of humor. I had always been the perfect student (it's easy to not get in trouble for talking when your classmates are busy talking to other people,) but he would get me in trouble all the time. He told me jokes and poked my in the back of my neck with a pencil and basically paid my poor attention starved 16 year old self some much wanted attention. (I would like to break hear and point out that I don't think I was really any more pathetic than your average 16 year old. It is my contention that all 16 year old girls are pathetically attention starved. )

I fell into a long, deep pit of Like with him quite quickly. I hung around with him and became what I thought was friends. He never really asked me out and I never came right out and told him how much I Liked him. I was actually quite good at hiding my feelings, honestly, because I had a good friend that had no idea 7 months into the school year. Eventually, however, the word managed to get passed around and he cut me cold starting at the beginning of Senior year.

It hurt but since I never claimed even to myself to love the boy, I got over it moderately quickly. (I was a painfully practical girl even at 16. I knew for a fact that few people actually married their high school crushes and that it's indeed hard to have a relationship with someone you can't even get a date with much less a kiss from. Therefore, it did me no good to Love. So I did the next best thing and Liked instead. See? Painfully practical.) Nevertheless, I did at the time maintain fantasies of being a professional writer someday and would often take my teenage angst to paper, leaving me with some truly embarrassing "journal" entries in which I pour my broken little heart out in the form of letters addressed to the crush. I got over the boy, but not before I stored my precious journal away for posterity in a box.

My first big mistake was showing these writings to my husband a few years after we got married. I had run across the notebook with the letters during a move. I read them again and I was cracking up over my overly emotional ramblings so thought I'd share. He got a kick out of them too. He also managed to file away the name so he could tease me about it for the rest of my life. (I try to tell my husband he's not my brother but he doesn't see what difference that makes.)

My second mistake was actually sitting in the row my parents saved for us at Stake Conference (large, regional LDS church meeting) on Sunday. Sitting right in front of us was my high school crush with his family. Three cute little boys and a wife that looked like a very nice lady. Out of the hundreds of people in that meeting my parents had to sit right behind them. sigh.

My third mistake was pointing out to my husband who this man was sitting in front of us.

"Oh really? ooooh Amy, do you want to go sit next to him?"

snicker. followed by my best death stare, which he is sadly building up an immunity to.

"Do you want me to go talk to him for you?"

I tried to stop him and he responded with the nail in my coffin: "hey, I read those journal letters!"

I came this close to pinching the two year old so I would have an excuse to leave the chapel. Needless to say I did not have a nice chat with my old friend after the meeting. It was a bit strained and akward. hmmm. wonder why. Maybe because my husbands voice is louder than he thinks it is.

The only thing worse than 16 year old idiocy is being reminded of your idiocy 16 years later.