CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States
There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
Profile continued . . .
My Crush on a Girl Two Years My Junior
this entry brought to you by lcd soundsystem, "watch the tapes"
I was thinking about this the other day, and I had a hard time remembering exactly what age I was, but I finally decided that I must've been 14, heading into the eighth grade. I knew a girl named Mary who was 12, but heading into the seventh grade. Still, she was two years younger than me. And I had the hugest crush on her. Huge! She had a cute round face and a freckled nose, pretty, wavy blonde hair. And she was absolutely adorable. Moreover, she had a really outgoing, extroverted personality. It was impossible to not like this girl.
But she was two years younger than me. I was absolutely mortified about my crush. I had no desire to not be around her. She wasn't a secret crush that I couldn't let anyone see. But I felt horrific guilt about it. My cheeks would flush hot when her mother saw us-- we'd be out playing and her mom would be heading out to work, and I'd smile politely, but would want to hide, thinking she would look at me with accusing eyes. It turned out that her mom actually quite liked me, which instilled me with a little bit more confidence about being around her daughter, but I would absolutely never knock on the door when I knew she was home. I would just wait for Mary to show up, knowing she eventually would. And when her mom wasn't home, sometimes Mary would offer for me to come inside. Whenever she went inside for something, I'd wait outside her apartment, and Mary would say, why do you wait out here in the heat? Why don't you just come in or something? I knew when her mother got off work and I knew when she left for work-- but what if she came home early? What if she came home and found this boy in her daughter's room, two whole years her senior?! I could do basic algebra! Mary didn't even know what that was! Imagine the things that her mother would be thinking if she saw us in the same room together!
My grandmother would warn me about Mary. "That little girl likes you," she'd say, and I despised her usage of the word "little girl". The truth is, Grandma referred to all girls, even those my own age as "little girls", and would refer to guy friends my age as "little boys". But when those words came out referring to Mary, my skin would crawl. I felt lascivious. "That little girl likes you," she'd say, and would then warn me about little girls falling in love with me. You don't want to be breaking no little girls' heart, she'd say. She was warning me, but she wasn't warning me in an accusing way. But one day she came to me and said "You need to stop hanging around that little girl," and again, the words stung, and she continued, "Her mom came over today before she went to work and said she appreciated you babysitting her daughter and wanted to know if you wanted to be paid for it."
This was flesh-renderingly awful. I had the hugest crush on her daughter, and, much to my guilt, had even been convinced by her to play truth or dare-- and let me say, the dares very quickly changed from "Jump up and down gargling while singing the Star Spangled Banner!" to the "experimenting pre-teen" variety, and although it never got to "innocence destroying" levels, it was enough that if we'd've gotten caught, I probably wouldn't have been allowed to see her again-- and her mom was asking me to babysit her daughter?! I felt like the devil. I felt like I was corrupting her daughter. She was two whole years younger!
Now that I'm older, it's funny how trivial two years is. Not only would I not be afraid of going into a 26 year old's house when her mother isn't home, but I wouldn't be afraid of going in her room. And I also wouldn't be afraid, if her mother wasn't home, to play truth or dare with her. Well, at least I wouldn't if I weren't married. But even as it is, my wife is some three years and some change older than me. There's a certain point, and it probably starts when you hit twenty, when you couldn't give a shit about two years. There's also a point where two years can potentially put you in jail. But there's also a portion of your life where, looking back, you find out that it's absolutely normal to have a crush on somebody two years younger, that it happens all the time, yet it felt like the most illicit, most amoral thing you could possibly do.
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with love from CRS @ 7:46 AM
1 Comments:
Do you realise that when you were 14, I was 17 almost 18? Also, when you were in the third grade I was in the seventh I could have been your baby-sitter then.
