Crushes aren’t just for ice and pineapples

 

This month, we’re looking back on first crushes, how they affected us, how we see them now, and how they affected us as writers.

Dang, that was a long time ago, but I still remember a lot from back then...Sometimes too much. When I was a junior in high school, I remember locking eyes with a short, brunette basketball player from the neighboring town of Appleton. There was an instant return of interest and I could have easily offered her a ride home after the game, but chickened out. Sadly, that was how I dealt with most opportunities back then. The next I knew, she (a senior in high school that year) was going steady with a guy from yet another high school.

They married shortly after graduation and a few months later, I opened the local newspaper to see an account of an auto fatality on Route One, south of the town where I lived. That was back when seat belts were seen as more of an annoyance than a life saver and the girl I let get away wasn’t wearing one and was killed instantly.

That left me with one of those existential ‘what ifs’ and stayed with me for quite some time. My writing features teens that sometimes find themselves in loosely similar situations, but I try to allow them to find more courage than I had way back then.

On a historical note, when I worked at the Augusta Mental Health Institute, I had the girl’s aunt as a patient.