Every couple years or so, I get an itch to look up old schoolmates on social media--Facebook in particular, these days--and this urge kicked in a few days ago.
Specifically, I wanted to look up the subject of what is to this day the longest, most intense, most persistent crush of my life.
The fellow in question was the middle son of a friend of my mother, and one of my classmates from fourth through eighth grade. We weren't especially good friends or anything; I was far too shy for that. But I loved him. He could do no wrong in my bespectacled nine-year-old eyes. Even when he teased me by bringing his dead bug collection to school and putting them three inches from my face as I squealed in disgust. Even when he spent our junior high recess pretending to be Star Wars characters with his friends. Even when he stopped speaking to me outright because he thought my best friend was stupid and obnoxious. I never told her, but I silently agreed with him. Yeah, she's stupid and obnoxious and I won't be her friend anymore if you will just look at me and talk to me and smile at me again please like me please please please.
It was pathetic.
After junior high graduation, we never saw each other again, but I thought about him often. The crush lasted nearly five more years, but the realization that he'd almost certainly forgot I even existed hit some time around my 18th birthday, and my infatuation finally cooled.
I still look him up, though, just because I'm curious.
It had been several years since the last time I looked him up, an uninformative venture ("Oh, I see he's filled out some. Hmm, identifies as Liberal.") that was, as these things usually are for me, nonetheless satisfying. I didn't still have a crush on him or anything silly like that, but I felt warmly nostalgic for the days when I did. I searched for his name Sunday evening wanting another brief but comforting fix of nostalgia, the pale glimmer of saudade at the edges, as always.
I was instead greeted with his new picture, in which he is the spitting fucking image of Stan Rizzo.
WELP, SO MUCH FOR THAT CRUSH HAVING GONE AWAY.
