Is it strange to have met the girl of your dreams in the second grade? Looking back, you would think it was a schoolboy crush, but aren’t you supposed to get over those? For a kid more likely to hold a game boy than a conversation with a girl, and at an age when cooties still ruled the opposite-sex politics, we could sit down and talk about almost anything; whether it was the Christmas tree in the front lobby of our school, or where we were as the bus drove us to enrichment. Enrichment – that’s how it all started. The school district we lived in took the most gifted students in each elementary school (there were several schools) and once a week brought them together and let them think. I of course started in first grade, but it was in second grade when she was chosen as the second student to go from our school.

     So it was every Wednesday for ten months we would wait in the lobby for the bus, sometimes talking about that Christmas tree, or what we had for lunch that day, or so many other things little kids talked about that I can’t even remember—all that comes to mind now is how we really could talk about anything. Once the bus arrived we found our way all the way to the front seat. For some odd reason, for us, this was the cool thing to do. We were always the first kids on the bus, before all the other students were picked up and we always sat in the front. We actually thought the other kids envied our prime position. And of course there was the bus driver, Mr. C, a middle-aged probably Italian guy with a flare for the comedic. Somewhere between the twenty minutes waiting in the lobby and the fifteen minute bus ride, my seven year-old heart came to hold her in its depths, however shallow it may have been at the time.

     Whatever feelings I may have had were enriched when our second-grade teacher Mrs. Johnson sat us next to each other for a few months. The seats changed quarterly, and for one quarter we sat right next to each other, right up front of the classroom. For all I know this was when she learned to read my handwriting. It was sloppy, almost chicken scratch at times but somehow she learned to read it, as I found out in our later years. These were the memories that killed me the most, for in life you die once but in love, you can die many times. And every time I can’t help to think about those innocent years of childhood, I send myself to the gallows because of how I completely blew my one chance to have a serious relationship with her.

     Eight grade, February, conveniently before Valentine’s Day. Somehow it was extracted from us our feelings for each other, and one day we were kidnapped to hold hands on the front lawn of our grade school and I had to ask her out. It seemed so sweet at the time, but our mutual reluctance came to be more prescient than we thought. Neither of us was ready for what was to happen next. Of course I would not admit it at the time, being a cocky little eighth-grade boy I could never admit to incompetence, but soon I would learn the value of humility. I knew I had feelings for her since the second grade, what I didn’t know was how to use them, or how to communicate them without intimidating her. Unlike me she admitted her fears of her first real relationship, almost constantly. I wouldn’t listen though. My head, blinded by love and filled with stories of who did what with whom, just continued along thinking she would come around at some point. Unfortunately I had yet to learn the value of patience. So I was running blind into walls and fences, or rather, through them, never giving any real thought to her comfort as we went along. I’m not going to say I couldn’t help it, because I don’t know that I could have or not. I was young, and she was so damn beautiful; brown eyes like mood rings, you could instantly tell how her day was going; golden-blonde hair, initially long, which was good enough, but then she cut it shoulder length and my fourteen-year old head went spinning; and smart, smarter than I was or at least she had more common sense, and that was the deal maker. You might be an angel, and she practically was, but if you can't hold an intelligent conversation than you might as well be a demon – not that I don’t like dumb or average girls, it’s just that I don’t have the energy to carry an entire discussion. I like to listen sometimes; I know now I have some sort of journalistic streak in me, some sort of urge to soak in the situation first before doing anything else; and she was just an ocean, it would have taken ten lifetimes to soak her up—and somehow my little heart knew this, what it didn’t know was how to best express it in a rational way. It wasn’t close to that level of maturity yet.

     Back then I don’t know what I was thinking, but right now all I want is for someone like her to be here beside me, curled up next to the campfire reading something, anything, all night. That’s another death sentence in my mind, the fact that unlike other girls my fantasies with her don’t usually involve anything sexual. It’s always reading by the campfire, or walking down Broadway in SoHo, or South Street in Philly; or Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, just to talk with her for a long, long time. For a guy who has a tough time holding one at all, the value of conversation is worth more than anything right now.

     So there will always be a part of me that loves her, just like there will always be a part of me that loves Sesame Street. It’s a part of my inner child. Even looking back from here I know I was in love with her; it wasn’t just a crush. Crushes come and go, she is still there. Sure it sounds cliché but a much simplified version of the truth is that she was my first love; she took a part of me and moved on. I moved on too, eventually, after a long period of withdrawal of course. It was during that period of withdrawal when I came to learn the value of communication. Not interpersonal, but internal communication; that is, how exactly I should listen to my heart and when to stop listening to my mind. The mind plays tricks on us, as the old saying goes. It doesn’t know what it really wants, because it really doesn’t want anything except for the blood flow. Now the blood flow—that comes from the heart and the heart does know what it wants. What it doesn’t know is how to get what it wants, and that’s why it sends the blood to the mind, and the rest of the body too.

     The trick of it all is learning to shut the hell up—inside your head that is. It’s always been a problem of mine that this mind can’t stop talking. Once it gets going, it runs like a sprinter, the problem being that life is a marathon. You try sprint through it all and not only will you miss a lot, but you’ll drop dead before the big finish. Stop running; shut the hell up. Be quiet, be still, and listen to your screaming heart. It’s not even saying too much, but because of your ignorance it is ignored. Harsh words you might say, but trust me when I tell you I say them to myself everyday.