My High School Crush

Like millions of others, I have a Facebook page, and as a result have been "friended" by my old high school classmates. It's an odd experience, as when I get a friend invitation from them, or if I stumble upon them and then invite them, there's a momentary rush of memory and then, well, pretty much nothing. The Facebook system allows for passive relationships--you can friend someone without exchanging a message. You invite them, they confirm you, and life goes on. I suppose some reunited classmates pursue a non-cyber friendship, but so far that hasn't happened with me, which suits me fine.

Yesterday I saw in the upper corner of my screen a suggestion for a friend, as we had several friends in common. It was an old high school classmate. I invited her to be my friend, and she accepted, and in her list of friends I saw the girl who was my high school crush my senior year of high school. I was a little giddy as I friended her (since she was going by her married name, I couldn't be absolutely sure it was her, but the picture on her profile page looked to be her). She confirmed me as a friend pretty quickly.

After this turn of events I dug up all the memories I could retrieve of her. Her name is Elise, and she was one of the popular crowd at my high school. She was (and still is, to judge by her photos) very pretty, but not to the point of unapproachability. She wasn't a cheerleader or homecoming queen or anything like that, but she ran with the elite crowd of the school.

I, on the other hand, was a pencil-necked geek and painfully shy. I had never had anything close to a girlfriend, and was for most of my time in high school a wallflower, the kid who was in your class but never said anything. I had a few friends but no social life--my parents always knew where I was, because I came home straight from school every night.

But then in senior year I was drawn into the drama kids. We had an ambitious kid, Jimmy, who through his own moxie put on plays, and saw some potential in me, god bless him. I acted in a few shows, and even directed one, Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water. That's where Elise comes in, as Jimmy thought she'd be a good person to play Susan Hollander in that play. She was also in my history class, but this was a great chance to get to know her even better.

Now, I did all my admiring from afar. Elise had a boyfriend, who was older than her (for some reason the girls in my high school tended to date boys who were two years older--I think in junior year there was some ritual where the boys tapped a freshman girl for mating purposes, but somehow I missed out on this) and like I said, she was part of the with-it crowd, and I was something other. But she wasn't stuck up, and she was nice to me. Over the years I've been inexplicably attracted to women for reasons that are unfathomable to me now, but when I think back to Elise I understand the attraction--she was cute, she was funny, she was nice to me, and we even shared the same birthdate.

There are certain things that stick in my memory. I remember that she was a big fan of the Supertramp album that was hot that year--Breakfast in America. I remember how cute she looked in her winter coat--I remember telling her she looked like a snow-bunny. I don't remember the circumstances, but she did once give me a ride in her car--I think it was a Volkswagen--and she had some miniature stuffed animal attached to the rearview mirror. She commented that it looked like it was humping the mirror, and that gave me a little thrill (I wonder if I blushed).

After graduation I actually called her on the phone and awkwardly asked her out, which was a futile gesture. She politely declined, or somehow avoided the issue, and I'm guessing that's the last time I spoke to her. She wasn't at the ten-year reunion I attended, and I didn't attend the twenty-five or thirty-year reunions that she did attend (she posted picture of the thirty-year reunion on her Facebook page, and while she looks great I'm stunned to see how old some of those people look). I did hear from her some years ago via e-mail when that ClassMates web-site started up. She's married (not to the guy she was dating in high school) and she has a kid or two or three. I seem to remember that she lives not far from me. Maybe a friendly lunch is in the future. Or maybe I'll just be content with the memory.