Remembering My First (Real) Crush

I consider him a *real* crush because I was in middle school when I first locked eyes on him. At that level I was clearly capable of handling the emotions I couldn't understand in elementary school.

I was in the 7th grade--12 years old, full life ahead of me. He was in the same year and the dorkiest thing on 2 legs. I thought he looked like Will Smith and I loved him to death.

He made me laugh SO HARD. And that was all she wrote. At that age, it was the little things, the simple things. Not how much money he made, if he was on the down low or if there was room for me in his life. We just liked to spend time together because, hell, we had nothing but time. I sincerely miss the kind of cheesy grin only he could give me back then.

My "friends", on the other hand, despised him.That is the only accurate word to describe their disdain for the poor guy. These girls were the homies before I met him, and in their words, I was "ditching my girls" to hang out with a boy. How blasphemous! It was like I had committed the epitome of social sin. For weeks this went on: me trying to sit with him at lunch, them picking fights with me in the hall. Once day it escalated: another good friend of mine had written in my planner (my daily agenda that was my nerd manual) of her love for this other guy in our grade. Because it was in my planner, it was assumed to be penned by me. My "friends", having discovered this ammunition to break us up while being extremely nosy, walked over to us, arm in arm and handed him the planner, the page turned to a inscription that read "I Love Ricky!" *haha, I can't believe I remember the guy's name* He read it, extremely confused as he usually was, and when I got a look at it, my face contorted with all the anger a pre-teen could muster. And I cut them off.

One thing that made him so memorable, so crush-worthy (and eventually boyfriend worthy) is that he never made me choose between him or my friends. Again, it's something so small, but even though they asked me daily to choose between my romantic feelings and my friendship with them, he NEVER asked the same of me. I can't say whether he intuitively felt my loyalty to him or if he just didn't care what I chose to do, but at the end of the day, it only made me want to be with him more.

I broached the subject for two reasons: 1) to reminisce and 2) to remind everyone what love is really about. It's not who can give you the most material things or be the most impressive match to your mother. Real love is like your first crush--its intuitive, the love happens organically, its not forced, and finally, you don't care what your friends think. At the end of the day, they're probably just lonely, bitter and jealous. Don't waste precious moments thinking of other people, it's all about you two. Period.