Today, at lunch, a conversation about giving the bird and the bees talk turned into our outrageous actions done in the name of primary school crushes. I found myself fondly remembering my first crush.

I was a nine-year old who had just moved to a new area. Moving meant leaving all my friends behind and starting a new school after sitting out almost half the school year at grade two. I remember feeling really awkward and missing my friends terribly on my first day as a grade three student in a new school.

It was around the time when I was getting really familiar with the school that I noticed M. There shouldn’t have been anything special about him. He was just an ordinary boy from a different class. An ordinary boy who did one thing. He made my heart pound just a bit faster. Out of principle, I took to avoiding him because frankly I didn’t like anything that I couldn’t understand. I certainly didn’t understand my reaction to him!

We ended up in the same class from grade four onwards. Somewhere along the way we became friends. I remember getting a C in music class that year and feeling horrible (up to this day I suck at musical instruments). A kind word, or from my perspective pity, from him made me cry. That was the first time I cried at school. I have yet to determine if it was because of the C or M.

We were in grade five and I have been working up the courage to finally disclose how I think I felt when I learned something terrible (for me)! My best friend also had feelings for him! Seeing that she had worked up the courage to tell me while I still held on to my secret, I gave her my blessings. Eventually, my best friend and M ended up together and I became the chief counsellor when my friend needed to rant.

I redirected my energies into reading as much of the school library as I could. I am proud to say that through that redirection, I found a mother in the librarian and gained the title of reading more than half the library. As for M, well I took to calling him by his last name, an habit I never grew out of. I also became his chief competitor, not intentionally, but we ended up competing in almost every area possible. In many ways I admired him. He was sweet, intelligent, knew where he wanted to go and though even-tempered and soft-spoken, always gave as good as he got. Eventually we took and passed GSAT and went off to different high schools.

I haven’t thought about this experience in years. In fact, I have no lessons to offer from it except that there exists a silver lining in every dark cloud: READING IS ONE OF MY PASSIONS. I won’t even embrace the thoughts of “What ifs?” It is however nice and heart-warming to remember the sweetness and ache of a child’s crush.

XOXO,
Chañel.

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