My first crush

I had my first crush when I was at primary school. He was a beautiful, clever, tall boy. I did the as-to-be-expected “I don’t like you” thing, as one must when one is 10-years old and has a crush. It lasted for three years, during which time I twisted and turned around him, watching him from behind my maths book, going to holiday tennis club to see him, despite a distinct lack of any tennis talent, and so on… typical small girl crush behaviour.

And then we were in our last year of primary school and, with that, came the 13th birthday parties – all very grown up, we moved from afternoon dress-up parties in the garden with jelly beans and tartrazine chips, to evening disco parties in the garage, with jelly beans and tartrazine-filled chips.

We would all stand around awkwardly, girls giggling on one side, boys on the other, fleeting glances across the room, everyone waiting for everyone else to start dancing, hormones raging around the room, silently causing havoc. With that came the dreaded Spin-the-bottle, a game that I still can’t bear. But. On my one dalliance into it, I longed for the bottle to land on me and him. It didn’t. I spent an awkward minute in a cupboard with a boy I didn’t like, studiously ignoring him, and blushing wildly. It put me off the game forever.

I continued my crush, however, and became quite good friends with him (I was unaware at the time that this was the beginning of a pattern for me) and then began swooning over notes passed back and forth in the classroom. Ah, young love.

Pity the notes were for my best friend, and not me.