Your high school crush? (or "The one that got away")

In My Humble Opinion
1

In this thread on dating, folks are telling stories of romantic abuse, many of them bad experiences from high school.

It got me thinking about my high school days and how I’m different now than I was then. It also got me thinking about my main high school crush (unrequited, of course).

So, here’s a chance to tell a lighter and more wistful story. Perhaps that person you pined over but never got up the nerve to tell. Maybe you wished they noticed you, or maybe they did and you just didn’t know it. (Variations are okay). Who was your big crush? (high school, college, whenever).

Okay, I’ll start.

In high school, I was not the “life of the party” type. Shy and introverted would be pretty apt terms, especially around members of the opposite sex.

[aside]
People I know now probably would not guess this, given that speaking in front of groups is now a pretty common thing for me. But then, it has to be when one teaches college classes. And I’m also on the microphone regularly – I teach dance lessons at a local club on Friday nights. How different now from the shy, gawky, invisible kid in high school. :wink:
[/aside]

So, the girl that made my little high-school heart go pitter-pat was named Joanna. Her last name was just behind mine alphabetically – so she was in my homeroom in my freshman year, as well as assigned to the desk behind me in my geometry class. This made me extremely happy. (There was also a rather pretty girl sitting in front of me, so I was fortunate to be surrounded by beauty in 4th period). Being good at math, I would help Joanna with some of the problems. Oh, how I loved geometry class – it was the one I looked forward to every day.

I’m sure I was only a friend to her, but I always hoped and wished that there would be some hint, some inkling, some clue that she thought of me as more. Alas, I was too shy to say anything myself.

She was in another of my classes in my sophomore year and again assigned to the seat behind me. What bliss! By my junior year, her mother had re-married and she was legally adopted by her stepfather, so her last name changed, meaning she was no longer in my homeroom. While this was a bummer, we still had the same English class, and the teacher didn’t do an alphabetical seating chart – we got to pick our seats this time. I made sure to get the one right in front of her.

However, junior and especially senior year, I saw her less often, and had less chance to interact with her. She had her own different group of friends, and while we were in a common class in the senior year, we weren’t seated in close proximity. Reality had kicked in. It seemed we talked more and were better friends in those shared classes in the first two years. Especially in that 9th grade Geometry.

The one day that still stands out in my mind – a very good day – was a vocational career day where some companies had booths set up, and we got to leave Geometry early to go over to the building and look through the displays. Joanna walked over there with me, and rather than heading off in our own directions, she stuck with me while we looked through the different rooms and booths. When there was a booth she was interested in, I waited while she looked, and she did likewise for me. That felt pretty special. She drifted in her own direction in the following years (and probably never knew how I felt about her), but for that one glorious day… she was all mine.

Epilogue: I saw Joanna again at my 10 year high school reunion, recently married. She wasn’t at the 5-year get-together, so I hadn’t seen her since high school. It was good to see her again. Maybe at the next reunion, if she’s there, I’ll tell her she was my teenage crush… :wink:

(There’s another one that comes to mind, from college. Less “unrequited”, though. I’ll save it for another post).

Anybody else?

2

I posted here because it was asking for stories – so seemed kind of a poll. But now I’m thinking it might be more appropriate for MPSIMS. If so – sorry, mods. If it needs to be moved, I’ll understand. :slight_smile:

3

I never even told my highschool crush about it, of course. ~grins~
Jennifer Rosengarten (I remember all these years later)…
petite raven tressed girl with the breasts of a babylonian goddess and a smile that could make a statue weak in the knees, and she always smiled at me in class.

Ahhh… highschool.

4

I ended up marrying my highschool sweetheart. I’m sort of hard-hearted, so I was her one that got away - for years. We’d hook up now and again over the years through college and after. I ended up running into her in a bar back in '98. I hadn’t seen her for 2 or 3 years.

She was with her family and they all decided to stop for a drink after some wedding reception. I had just gotten off-shift from one of my bartending gigs and was trying to deaden the pain of my wasted life. I was thinking about going back to school at the time. We started dating, fell in love all over again, I got into Computer School, landed a job, we got married, had two kids, and lived happily ever after (at least so far).

There you go.

Winston

5

Can I go even younger? The only crush I ever really regretted:

My very first crush. I was only 12, so too young to follow up on it, but in a few years, who knew? Blue eyes, tall, and handsome - I’ve judged all the blue-eyed men I know by him inadvertently since then.

If we’re talking about high school, there was a guy who I had a big crush on - but he moved to Oklahoma or someplace.

6

I was in LOVE with a girl from nursery school through high school. No joke. Nursery school. We became friends in high school, but nothing major. We ended up going to the same college. She starts calling me. We start dating.

And…

I broke up with her. She wasn’t as interesting as I had imagined her to be. There was probably no way she could live up to what I had built up in my mind over the decades.

7

Teresa, a nice Catholic girl from my small suburban-Buffalo high school. She was a year behind me and a swimmer, with an incredibly tight body and an unbelievable ass. She was pretty, a little skinny maybe, and a great dancer in that she knew she was a great dancer and didn’t bother grinding or freaking - she was just there to have fun. She was also frighteningly bright, having a crisis of faith, and loved all the same teachers I did. My AP US History teacher loved me, and figured it out very quickly… and was sweet enough to suggest to Teresa that she should talk to me, because I did really well on the exam. (Thanks, Mrs. H. :slight_smile: )

We used to talk on the phone for hours while I was trying to talk her through history… it was a small town, and we’d be chatting while we sat on our porches. I’d hear the train whistle from the tracks in the middle of the city on the phone, which we both found just hilarious, and we’d yammer back and forth about nothing until she’d finally sigh and we’d talk about the Constitution or whatever was the topic du jour.

I took Teresa to my senior homecoming dance, and was charmingly awkward throughout. I could have sworn that she was into me - just the way she looked at me, the way she’d press her hips against me during the slow dances and the way she’d just sway hopelessly during the swing blocks that were the only things I was able to dance proficiently to.

Not into me. It’s a shame. It’s sad, too… she wasn’t mean about it or anything, and in fact was very kind. I can’t even be mad at her. :wink:

As far as I know, she’s at a small rural college a few hours from where we grew up. I haven’t talked to her since we had a short volley of emails during her freshman year. I’ve kind of wondered how she grew up in her college years.

8

Ahhh…Dave. Tall, very tall, but younger than me by a year. He made a joke that I laughed at during a skiing outing - I knew that he’d noticed me too some time later when he referred to that joke. Brown hair, olive brown eyes - very nice. I was smitten.

He rollerbladed. I used to drive up past the church parking lot that he rollerbladed in late at night on the off chance he’d be there. I wasn’t into basketball - I played tennis - but once I even took a basketball with me on the premise that I was out to “shoot some hoops” just so that I could be up there if he came by rollerblading. He played bball, you see, so there’d be some sort of connection. Ahh, high school and awkwardness.

He let me borrow his gloves once on one of these outings. When I handed them back, he held my hand a few moments longer than was necessary, and it felt electric. Ahh, young love.

The best part? He didn’t get away. We dated all through high school, and our fifth anniversary is in August.

9

I was very much like Monstre was… Very shy, not the life of the party, and very introverted around girls. I would litterally freeze up when a pretty girl would even talk to me. My first crush was Penny. It was 5th grade and was a crush I had through High School. She was short, had beautiful brunette hair, and the absolute prettiest face in existance. In High School I did manage to muster up enough courage to ask her to dance with me a few times at some school dances, but I never got up the courage to ask her out. At our 10 year class reunion picnic, Penny was there and I was able to catch up. At that time she was engaged and had just given birth to a little girl. She was more beautiful that I could have imagined. But I still didn’t have the courage to tell her I had a thing for her. Just a couple months ago I heard that she is now divorced. Our 20 year class reunion is coming up in about 2 years. Maybe I’ll have the courage then.

Another girl I had the hots for in Jr. High was Maureen. She used to sit in front of me in 7th Grade English class. We would talk a lot about different things but I was always too chicken to ask her out. For Valentine’s Day that year, they were selling corsages. You could buy one and send a message with it to anyone you would like… either with your name on it or anonymously. I bought Maureen one and sent it anonymously. On Valentine’s Day, there were a lot of girls that had many corsages sent to them, some as many as 5 or 6, but Maureen only had one… the one I sent her. I remember asking her if she knew who sent it, but she indicated she didn’t… and I let her continue to wonder. Man, was I pathetic back then!

There were some girls I did have the courage to ask out for dates in High School, but none who had the effect like Penny and Maureen did on me.

10

Molly. (Name changed to protect anonymity). Ah Molly.

On a highschool trip, I made a romantic gesture to her just to save my own pride. I had planned on making the gesture to someone else, but that someone else was sucking face with another guy, so the gesture went to Molly, just on a lark.
She took it rather more seriously than I did, and over the next four months, flirted with me subtly.
Too subtly.
I was dumb as a bunch of rocks and never saw the signs, and they were pretty darn blatant. It even got to the point of her enlisting mutual friends to drop some subtle hints that became not-so-subtle. Finally, four months later, I got the hint and called her up. We talked for hours, and hit it off really well. Unfortunately, one week later I was leaving the state for summer vacation for 2 months.
We wrote back and forth, but she found another guy to go out with ‘just to go out with someone’.
I still kinda pine for what might have been sometimes if I hadn’t been so thick.

11

sigh.,

Mine was in college. I remember the first time I saw Sagit. My freshman year. It was like my heart hit my knees. Ahhhhhh. A nice Jewish girl at a Catholic college. I managed the nerve to talk to her on the long walks to a building on the far side of campus. I would hover near the parking lot waiting to see her coming out of Aquinas hall, then make a beeline to intersect her path. But I never saw what would amount to interest from her. I convinced my self that I was shooting out of my league, and I should move on.

Then there was that day in the computer center. I caught a glimmer of sadness in her eyes when I told her about a girl I was dating. Did I blow it? Was there some interest there? I’ll never know. I was too much of a chickenshit to find out.

I’ve heard that she’s married and living somewhere in Saint Paul. But it’s a big city. I still keep my eyes out for her though. Heck, I even Google her name every once and a while, just to see if anything comes up. Nothing ever does.

12

In Spain you have to pass all your college courses. At one point I had collected 4 “fails” with 2 grades still to go, so I decided to take a “catchup year”, clean the slate and start the last two years without any fails dragging me.

And that’s when thisrealniceguy asked me to be his partner for a dance class. Taking that year was probably the best professional decission of my life (I didn’t fail anything in the last two years, where most people collect Fs like they’re made of gold) but DARN THAT DANCING CLASS… if he’d happened to ask before I had told my parents about stopping for a year, I woulda said yeswithsugarontop. To hell with studying.

By the time I got back he had a gf, and I’m not into breaking couples.

PS: I have no idea why I get so many invitations in the last two weeks before moving to another town or country, or in the last day of my vacation, but I sure do.

13

I also was very shy and quiet, which allowed me to disappear into the shadows in public High School. However, the year I attended a small private school, my shyness and the fact that I wasn’t like other american girls, caught the attention of one of the Iranian students. He was tall dark and gorgeous. The whole school was pretty much running on his father’s wealth. He was supposedly dating another girl, her father was a senator or something. But his roomate told me that it was just for show. I’d never had anyone look at me the way he did, like I was the most beautiful thing on earth. We would take walks together, holding hands, but he always made sure a friend of mine was with us. His cousin, who was also a student, would try to keep him away from me because my father wasn’t wealthy. My friends tried to warn me against getting involved with him because of his nationality. * This was during & after the Iranian hostage situation.* If my father had known I was in love with an Iranian boy, he would’ve put me in an all girl school. During summer break, he sent me an invitation to a party at his family’s house in FL. I wasn’t able to get there, but I couldn’t wait until school started again, so I could see him. It turned out that the tuition for the school went up drasticly and my father refused to pay it, so I’d be going back to public school. I found out from a friend that the reason it went up was because my Iranian boy had gone back to Iran to fight in the war, the party had been his farewell party. :frowning:

14

I’m not going to tell my story, because there’s a possibility that it will still develop. I don’t think that’s very likely, but…

If there is overwhelming demand I’ll tell the story thus far.

15

I lost two crushes to guys that held torches for years before:

High School: I modeled for my crush in art class and she made numerous sketches of me. She was amazing and talented as she was pretty. We talked openly about everything. I asked her to Prom, but she declined saying she was going to out of town with another girlfriend instead. Days later, her friends told me to ask her out again and she accepted. At Prom, she ditched me though shortly after we arrived. Her father was there as a chaperone and even he didn’t know where she took off to. We barely spoke to each other for the remainder of that senior year. Years later, she invited me to her wedding and I accepted. She married her old childhood sweetheart from her old hometown. As I danced with her at the wedding, the first thing she did was apologize profusely for ditching me at Prom. All along she had still been carrying a torch for her old b/f. I asked how he proposed, and she said that she and he had been living together. She was on the phone with someone else and asked her guy if they’d ever get married, he said “yes,” and that was the “proposal.” Perhaps I was better off.

College: I sat next to a brunette amazon goddess in my theater class. She always wore sweats to class though. One day, she asked if I had a car and if I could drive her to local high schools to drop off brochures for the state Miss Teen pageant. I obliged but asked how she got roped into doing that and she said WAS the current Miss Teen of the state. “Surrrrre, you are,” I said. But after class, we went to her dorm room and she showed me her tiara, sash, and a videotape of the pageant. From there, we went out and I spent all my free time with her and it was pretty platonic. After a winter break, she called me to say she had good news and I should see her right away. Driving thru a snowstorm, she met me in the dorm lobby and told me she got “the call.” “From who?” I asked. “Y’know, my calling.” I was still confused. " … to become a nun," she finally answered.

I don’t know how long it took me to recover. She left after that semester and we corresponded by mail for almost a year. The last letter I got from her told me that she was leaving study and planned to marry her old boyfriend from high school.

16

Well, the one in college was less “unrequited”, but still “got away”.

Anna transferred to my college in the spring term of my sophmore year. She was kind of a shy type who kept to herself, but was beautiful and somewhat quirky. She hung out in the music building (she was in the chorus that term, if I recall), where I spent lots of time (practicing piano). I got to know her, and we would joke around. It seemed we were pretty in synch. We would both laugh at the same things, often things we found funny that nobody else would get.

She had a boyfriend at the time, but nothing serious, and that ended over the summer. She wrote me a couple of times, and she was all I was looking forward to when fall term rolled around. I had to get to campus a few days early, when most students hadn’t come back, yet. The day before my birthday, no less, and hardly anybody around.

I ran into a friend (who lived in town) who had been helping the new girls move their stuff into the dorms (good way for him to hit on the new freshman females ;)). He mentioned that he’d met Anna, moving into the dorm, and she had asked about me. Wow! Monstre’s day = made.

We spent the next two weeks almost solely in each other’s company – it was heaven. Until, for some reason, I lost out to another guy who was seeking out her attention. She started paying all her attention to him. And it was a shame, because he was the cocky, arrogant type, and from what I heard, somewhat abusive. All I wanted was to have her to myself and treat her like she deserved to be.

Well, she dated him for just that one semester. We were still good friends after that, and sat together in a class later on. I was still always interested in her. There was a little romantic activity between us one more time when I came back to visit my alma mater the term after I graduated. Spent time with her one night that weekend, we got a pizza and hung out at her place. That was the last time I saw Anna, though – I never knew when or where she moved to. And to my knowledge, she’s never gone back to a homecoming or reunion there.

17

I married the girl who had a crush on me in highschool.

We dated for about a year after freshman years of college. But being the “special” boy I was back then, I cheated on her. Damn long distance relationships.

We didn’t talk for about 10 years, she made another girlfriend of mine cry. Never tell a virgin she’s lucky to be dating someone who’s very good in bed. Especially an overly self-concious one. Damn glad to be rid of her I tell ya.

And then we ran into each other, although I believe she stalked me. One thing led to another, it was a snowy New England winter, and we’re married and have a baby. What a crazy crazy world.

18

When I was in 8th grade, we had to have Health for one quarter of our gym class. I walked in on the first day to see this beautiful girl sitting in the corner almost crying because this asshole named Wes was making fun of her. He was telling some story about how he had scored with her the night before but she hadn’t been any good. I didn’t like Wes and knew he was prone to lying for the sake of lying, so I went over and got him to leave her alone.

Apparently, nobody had ever stood up for her like that before. She told me her name was Viviane, and we became the best of friends very quickly. I had to settle for friends at that point because she had a boyfriend and, like Nava, I don’t break up relationships. So I waited.

9th grade rolls around, and she’s broken up with her boyfriend. I’m in the clear, right? I invite her to our freshman homecoming dance with the intention of telling her I was in love with her during a slow dance. I had everything worked out, until she called me two days before the dance to tell me she had to go to her great-aunt’s funeral. I took that as her hint that she wasn’t into me (definately wrong now that I’ve had time to look back at it, but hindsight is 20/20).

At the end of 10th grade, she moved to Greece. We wrote and called back and forth for a few years before we lost contact. And yes, I still miss her. :frowning:

19

Ah, Ian. My final college crush, the one I’m still not (quite) over.

I actually met Ian my freshmen year when we had an art history class together, but he didn’t really make an impression on me then. It was only my sophomore year, when we went abroad together (to Rome), that I developed my crush.

Ian was on the hockey team (the only D-1 mens’ sport at my school) and he was so dreamy. Beautiful eyes, lovely curly dark hair…and best of all he was pretty smart, albeit in a very lazy kind of way. C’mon, how many hockey players major in art history? By lazy, though, I mean that even though he chose that major (so clearly had some more intellectual impulses) he didn’t seem to care much or to want to work hard at it…so it was hard to tell if maybe he just thought it would be an easy major. But if he just wanted easy, why not economics like all the other hockey players? He was an enigma. But the fact that he was a hockey player also meant that he was in demand. He could get any girl he wanted (I imagined) and certainly some who were more attractive than me, if slightly more ‘used’.

But then we went to Rome, and his prospects became much more limited without (pardon my crudeness) the ‘hockey muff’, as we called them, around. I used my opportunities as best I could with the limited amount of rational thought I could muster in his presence. We spent one lovely afternoon together alone, after I deliberately lingered in a museum we were visiting that he was spenidng extra time in, so that we would leave together and well after anyone else. He didn’t try to ditch me (I know, damn him with faint praise) and was a pleasant companion. As I recall, he made some excuse for not buying me a rose from one of those horrid street vendors…which I took as a hopeful sign in an ‘I acknowledge a romantic possibility between us’ kind of way. A few days later he and the two other guys he hung around with on the trip invited me to a strip club with them, but I didn’t have the nerve. The next morning, they told me “One of the strippers reminded us of you.” I’m still trying to figure that one out.

Finally, our last day in Rome arrives, and we all go out to dinner and get drunk enough that the waitstaff took advantage of our intoxication and total lack of Italian in order to screw us over. But I digress. Drunk Melandry + crush + ‘it’s my last chance’ = Melandry practically throwing herself at Ian, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. But in the end it didn’t seem to have much effect, so when we got back to the hotel I changed into my PJs and went out into the hall to say ‘goodnight’ to a couple of friends. And in the hall I encountered Ian, clad only in boxer shorts. (Smokin’ hot, btw! As I type this and calll that memory to mind…wow.) He made some sort of compliment about my PJs (not at all sexy, in reality) which I paid no attention to because I was 1) drunk and 2) naive/stupid and so, focused on going to bed, I completely missed the fact that he was certainly not out in the hall in his boxer shorts only, apparently waiting for me, just for the hell of it! I totally missed my chance! And while in many ways what would have happened would have been a bad idea (I doubt he wanted to date me, just saw an opportunity to screw me and thought ‘why not?’) I am still wistful (and more than wistful) at the thought of the fun I might have had that night. But the reason my crush still lingers is that I really think we would’ve made a great couple…and after the plane ride home I never saw him again, except in uniform, on the ice, playing hockey.

20

Back during my freshman year of high school, I joined speech team. In retrospect, I can’t believe I did it; I’m insanely shy now, and, when I was a high school freshman, it was about a million times worse. But, for some reason, the guy who did the high school announcements put in a plug for it, and I ended up showing up after school.

As a demonstration for us prospective speech-ers, two of the members did a short dramatic scene. One of them was everything that I thought was oh-so-great in a guy; taller than me, dark hair, light eyes, wore a trenchcoat, a bit of a geek (not not overly geeky). We will call him (insert name here). I thought (insert name here) was cute. We ended up working in the same category, and I found out that he was really cool, and into some of the same things I was.

So, yeah. Instant crush for the chickie who’d never even held hands with a guy before. Of course, being on speech team did not mean that I’d gotten over my shyness enough to, oh, say, express my feelings for him. So, instead of dating (not that I think he would have anyway, I’m so not his type), (insert name here) and I became friends. He IMd me about girl problems all the freakin’ time, which, let me tell you, caused me to bang my head against the wall more than once. After a couple of years–yeah, years–I realized that I didn’t have a crush on him anymore, and we remained friends.

Nowadays, (insert name here) is one of the maybe 3 people from high school I’ve kept in touch with, and I count him amongst my closest friends. We still have a bunch of stuff in common, which is nice. Honestly, I think that, had I said something and had he been interested, we probably wouldn’t be friends anymore, which would really suck. I eventually did tell him, though, about six months ago, that I’d had a crush on him in high school, figuring that, since I was about to get married, now was as good a time as any. I think he was amused.