My one-month brush with love, ten years later

Okay, so this is a story from when I was eleven.  I'm writing this now because a couple of hours ago, I realized that ten years ago to this month, I was in love.  I was also eleven years old and in sixth grade.



There was this boy...I fell head over heels with him.  A silly, childish crush.  And from what I heard through the grapevine, that crush was reciprocated right back.  Well, the entirety of the sixth grade class of the school knew it and kept trying to put the two of us together.  Hell, even our moms knew this stuff, and so did the teachers.  It wasn't a secret at all, but even though we mutually and genuinely liked each other, this kid never made the move.

Well, around this time ten years ago, I made that first move.  I always made the first move that year, when it concerned him.

So before all this happened, we exchanged phone numbers.  I was pretty much calling him every day, and we'd talk for a while.  It was fun.  It was cute.  And after all the teasing and pranking, and messing around, it was love.  Or at least love as it would be at the age of eleven.

The Halloween dance...I invited him to go with me, and so we did.  We weren't together yet - we'd only known each other two months by this time.  Around Christmas we also exchanged presents.  I gave him a Furby Baby which named itself Maytay (meaning "love" in Furbish).  I can't remember what mine was named, but mine was pink and his was blue.  He gave me Pokemon toys and a snowman plushie which Mom still brings out every Christmas season when we decorate the tree.  I don't know why we still have it.

Over the school year, we traded notes in class, and very often.  We weren't discreet, especially during silent reading time, but our teacher never stopped us.  I still have those notes, too.

He was trying so hard to express his feelings, but he was so scared.  I don't know why.  And that's when I decided to take fate into my own hands.

"It's ok...I love you too."

Relieved, he said he was so glad to hear me say that.  So after eight months of flirting around a supposed "courtship," we were together.  But, we never kissed, and we never hugged.  We never even held hands, we were just together because we said we were.

For about a month.

He dumped me for another girl.  The bastard.

And that was my sixth grade March Madness.