Or worn a sandwich board.
While he didn’t take the bait, he was unfailingly polite and never exploited my feelings or made fun of me (to my face anyway). Which is saying a lot. Like most high school crushes, it was pretty epically cringeworthy. Once, for Valentine’s Day, I sent him a Crush Gram through my AVID class. How it worked was you sent someone a bottle of Crush soda, then they could pay like 50 cents or something to find out who the sender was. I was a wimp and left it blank. So not only was I a tease, I cheated him out of his money.
Now that’s true love.
The next time I saw him I resolved to find some shit out with some mad sleuthing skills.
Me: Sooo, did anyone get a Valentine’s Day gram? Those are so lame. (nervous laughter)
Dude: Someone sent me one of those soda ones.
Me: reaaaalllly? (feigned shock) did you find out who sent it?
Dude: I went to look. They didn’t leave their name.
Me: oh, what a shame. (Recon mission TOTALLY nailed. I’m a ninja.)
The romance never came to pass, and my stalker-esque devotion remained unrequited. I moved away to school and life went on. On my visits home and when I finally moved back after graduation, we would periodically see each other, more frequently when my mom babysat for him for a few months. At one point we actually exchanged phone numbers, more out of necessity than anything else. This, along with the couple of times he pocket-dialed me or called (on purpose) would have been enough to send my 15-year old self into a fit of hysterics. By that time, however, he had taken up the spot in my mind as a casual acquaintance that I could actually have a normal conversation with, without blushing, smiling like a vapid moron or collapsing into nervous giggles.
What’s the point of my wistful recollection, you ask? There is a point. I was getting to it. Come in, sit down. Would you like a cookie?
Let me paint a picture for you. Of unrequited love, a story more romantic and tragic than Romeo and Juliet.
My youngest brother is somewhat of a metro. Seriously. He actually spent an hour in the bathroom yesterday complaining that he couldn't get his hair quite right. I guess we all have our battles. Anyway, a few months ago, a girl at school professed her undying love for my little brother, who we'll call Mr. Sexy.
Seriously, who could resist this dreamboat?
Not only is he not allowed to date (Damn skippy, yo), his schoolwork, volunteering at church and baseball leave him almost zero time for anything other than food, sleep and an occasional dump. It is my understanding that he told her as much, and let her down as easily and gently as he knew how. I believe this because we didn’t raise no fool.
This, apparently, did not go over well. Mr. Sexy is now this horrible heartbreaking Casanova who trifles with poor unsuspecting girls’ feelings and leaves broken hearts in his wake.

Because I am nosy and can’t leave well enough alone, I went on trusty Facebook and sure enough, our forlorn and heartbroken heroine has poured her heart out to the Internet world. She ranged from song lyrics, her own poignant ramblings when she fancied herself a poet, to the purposefully misspelled text that these young’ns are so fond of.

He then farted.









I can think of a few other countries she’d be right at home in.
At this point however, our young Romeo had had enough, and finally just gave her the cold shoulder. So she gave up and got a new boyfriend a week later.
I guess ‘forever and a day’ in teenager speak is a week and a day.

