Project Love: Day #4

To Young to Love

Yesterday I talked about my first celebrity crush…Tom Cruise. Looking back on that “incident” still makes me cringe. I think writing about that experience has made me think about it even more. My plan to write about it and forget about it obviously backfired!

But, it did also make me think of my first real crush.

It was on my 4th grade teacher, Mr. Big (name changed to protect the innocent). For your pure enjoyment here is a picture of my fourth grade class, the year is 1981.

Mr. Big is obviously the only adult in the picture. Look at him, will you? Even today, some twenty plus years later, he is still handsome. He was tall and had a fantastic head of hair and beautiful blue eyes. He was the sweetest man I knew. In fact if that guy, the exact one in the picture, asked me out on a date today, I would be all over it.

Oh, by the way, I’m the one off to Mr. Big’s left with the blue jacket, blue jeans, blonde bowl cut, and red high heels. Yes, I said high heels! Hey people, I was serious about this crush…I was no dummy! I knew men liked a woman in heels. I didn’t care if we were on a field trip out in the middle of the country or not, I was gonna wear my heels.

I’m sure my mom fought me on my shoe choice before school…but it looks like I either won the fight, sucka! Or I wore tennis shoes, like she suggested, and then snuck the heels in my book bag and changed on the bus. Either way…I think I made the best decision, right?

And see the cute little red head two people to the right of me, in the green jacket. That is (still to this day) my best friend, Super Mom. She and I met for the first time this particular year and became fast friends. At the time we lived right down the street from each other and from fourth grade on we were inseperable.

We still see each other, not as often as I would like, but we are still the best of friends. In fact, she is the one that my dad first called when he found out my ex was leaving me. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone and my dad knew I needed the support. She was at my house with coffee in hand within 30 minutes. God love her! I still tear up when I think about how supportive of me she has been over the years.

But that’s a post for another day, back to Mr. Big.

He was dashing! I loved going to school that year. Oh who am I kidding, I’m a girl, I loved going to school every year. But that year in particular was awesome. I’m sure I was an annoying fourth grade girl who giggled too much, who was bossy at times, and who always wanted to be the center of attention, but Mr. Big always made me feel like I was special. No, not, “this is getting creepy and deserves to be an After School Special” kind of special. But you know, he always had this way of including me and making me feel like the center of attention even though there were twenty other kids in the room.

Come to find out, when one of my other friends in this class posted this picture on Face Book, it turns out that all of the girls in that picture felt the same way I did.

Huh, guess I wasn’t as special as I thought.

And that particular year, my friends, is the year I believe my insecurities about men always liking my friends better than me, started.

Love is a Battlefield