It was first grade, in Philadelphia, PA, back in 1952, and Miss Prisner was my first grade teacher.
I loved her.
Come to think of it, I still love her.
She has to be about 70 or 75 now, of course. Maybe 80.
But that doesn’t matter. We’ll always have Philadelphia.
Tris
Aww, “Linda Lee” is the perfect name for one’s first crush. That’s so cool.
I was in fifth or sixth grade, so about 11. There was another girl I was friendly with at a younger age, and I named my cat after her, which probably sounds stalkerish in retrospect- but I wasn’t thinking on that level.
I don’t know if there’s a real crush involved, but my youngest brother is finishing up sixth grade and mentioned wanting to ask a girl to the sixth grade dance. Eep. He said he wanted to start dating (not because he was interested in anyone, just like it was a good career move because everybody else was doing it :p). I’m hoping he waits a while - my first date was at 14. (The girl mentioned above turned me down at said dance, but did dance with me for one song. It was only later that I realized she did it out of pity. When a twelve-year-old girl pities you that much, it’s pretty sad. Glad I didn’t get it!)
I never went through the “girls are icky” stage, although I wasn’t always attracted to them. I remember thinking in 3rd grade that it’s foolish to be like my classmates and have the girls are icky attitude because in a few years I’d be lusting crazily over them (I was a perceptive little kid, especially with the lusting crazily part!)
Then in 7th grade I developed a crush on Chelsey. Very nice girl, and really freakin’ hot!
Gad, this thread just pounds home yet again what I’ve always known. I’m Romantically Retarded.
IIRC my first actual crush was in fouth grade. Prior to that I’d been occupied with loftier goals, like wanting to be Zorro: wear a black cape, ride a horse, be mysterious, swashbuckle around and stab people. (Serious tomboy issues, hmm?) What riches could life possibly equal to that?
It was…troubling that stalwart girls, my former compadres, inexplicably become all moony and weird.
Then suddenly I saw…I forget his name, actually.
I think we were in chorus and geography together, though. And I beat him in the school’s spellling bee. ( Zorro wouldn’t have done less.)
He was reedy, shorter than I–everyone was–blond, wore glasses and I think freckles were involved too. But he was mesmerizing, a magnet to iron. He was a drug, pure magic. I became obsessed with what he scrawled in his notebooks. (Spaceships, IIRC, and unlikely automobiles.) I worshipped him from afar, stunned and mute. Durst I actually sit by him on the bus…?
It ended badly, not with a bang* but a whimper.
I never Spoke My Love, we both grew up, I didn’t become Zorro and he didn’t become an astronaut.