# 3

Okay... you baby. Once, I met this girl, and I was kinda crushing on her. This was right before I went on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. During LDS missions, missionaries are expected to put away all their worldly cares (including girls) while they focus on sharing the Gospel and service.

Well, it turned out this girl was going on a mission too, and at right about the same time, and to the same country. That meant that I'd end up seeing her for a week or two in the Brazilian Missionary Training Center. So time passed and I went on my mission. There I was, being diligent and focused in the Brazilian MTC and then one day I saw that girl. I totally forgot that our times were going to overlap, and it totally took me by surprise. There I was, a new missionary, totally trying to keep the rules, and this girl I was crushing on showed up.

Now the next part was immature and childish, but, if you know me even a little, that shouldn't be surprising. I was embarrassed that I still was crushing on this girl because now I was a missionary. I didn't know what to do, so I fell back on the time honored tradition of just pretending she wasn't there. So that's what I did. I never said "Hi" once. I never looked at her when we passed in the hallway; never waved in the lunchroom. It got to be really awkward (imagine that). Sometimes we'd be pretty much right next to each other, and I just pretended like she didn't exist. I could feel her looking at me. At meals, she started sitting facing me, and looking at me for the whole meal (it was bad... I felt bad, but since I'd started, I couldn't stop--what was I going to say "Oh hey, hey that was you this whole time... I thought maybe it was... uhhh, someone invisible..."). So I finally left, never having ever acknowledged her once.

I got to the point where I could realize how dumb I'd been, and just kinda laugh at it. I'd tell other missionaries about how dumb I'd been. We'd laugh about it. I could laugh about it because it was in the past. It was over and done. I got back from my mission and guess who was in my Portuguese class! That's right. That same girl. I went back to ignoring again... This time she didn't stare. She bought into the ignoring thing.

We continued this way until we were put into a group together. At that point, she said something like, "Oh, hey, didn't I know you before my mission?" I am grateful she provided me that out instead of just saying, "Why have you been ignoring me for 2 years?" I just kind of played it off like, "Umm... did I? Oh yeah, yeah, we lived in the same apartment complex." Like I said, horribly awkward, after that group session, we went back to ignoring each other. She'd pop up every now and then at parties, and sometimes my guilty conscience drove me to attempt awkward small talk (and not the good type of awkward small talk, when it's awkward and I think it's funny--I'm talking about the bad type of awkward small talk where your face blushes and it makes you drink your punch really quickly so you can get a refill). Anyway, sometimes I get horribly awkward dealing with girls that I have crushes on.

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Following Impulses, pt. 2

Alright, before you read this post, you need to read this post. Trust me.

Let me clarify something real quick about the compulsion to check back on each of these secret crushes. I have reason to believe that they both had crushes on me. I'll relate the story of the college one only now, we'll save the high school one for later.


I was a freshman in college, and I had a thing for surfer chicks. I also continue to have a thing for freckles. Lo and behold, as I am going to a pre-freshman year leadership course, I meet a freckle faced surfer chick. I get her number, and when I call her, bad thing #1 occurs to me. Her roommate is the only other girl from my high school that went to my college. Normally this wouldn't be such a bad thing, but apparently she had a crush on me, and instead of taking her to prom, I asked and took her best friend (come on, one has to be sincere). I guess it was all the worse that she was the senior student body president, so she was able to plan and do all the work for prom, then stay at home and cry her eyes out...by herself (okay, now I'm sounding like a bad guy even to myself, especially because I was "just friends" with her best friend--I just didn't want to send the Pres. a message that I was interested).

Anyway, I call her on the phone, we hang out, whatever. I had never kissed a girl (I had been kissed twice, but that's another great story), and it was because I had this huge irrational fear of closing my eyes and leaning in and kissing a girl's nose. As we were talking one night, surfer chick (who is my ex-college crush) somehow managed to get me to confess this. After that, she said, "Well, I wish that the boy that I like would just kiss me, but he's scared to kiss a girl. What do you think about that?" Well, I thought, "She's talking about me," and I asked her out. She said yes, and it was looking good. Just to double check things, I asked her roommate if, when she was talking about that boy was who was scared to kiss girls, she was talking about me. "Umm, I dunno, you might want to check with her," was the response that I got. So I called her back and said, "Hey Surfer Chick, when you were talking about that guy that you like that's scared to kiss you, you were talking about me, right?" Her response, "No." Immediately I explained that I had misread her and called off the date. Also, I became very cynical towards girls for the rest of my freshman year, and declared that skiing was my new girlfriend.

As I've talked to various girls about what happened, I heard two different things. 1 -- What a mean girl/tease. 2 -- She was into you, she just freaked out when you called her on it and denied everything. I would like to believe that the 2nd option is true. But then again, I have gone through a lot of self-torment about the situation that will have been totally in vain if I ever find out that the 2nd option is true.

The story continues. After serving a 2 year mission for the LDS church in Brazil, I ran into her again. Now, on that mission, we weren't supposed to have any girlfriendy relationships with chicks, so I was rusty. She ran into me at the library and the conversation went like this: "MyFakename!" "Oh, yeah, surfer chick." I looked at her for a moment, decided that I had no idea what to do, nor was I comfortable in the slightest with the situation, then I walked away, once again pretending like she didn't exist.

I guess I've had relatively low self-esteem with the ladies. I'm not totally sure why. Let me just put it this way--the first time I ever held a girl's hand, I was 21, and we'd already been dating for 5 months. After that, it took me another month and a half to kiss her. I'm a bit of a slow mover. Tonight, hanging out with friends, I was still feeling sick, and so I decided to come home and go to bed. I checked my Facebook account and I had one new message. It said,

Hi!
OF COURSE I had a crush on you. Please, like who didn't? Although 7 years and 500 miles separate us, I probably am still fatally attracted to you.
Fakename.

I've added a couple of extra hard returns here to verbally symbolize the awkard silence that filled my red red ears. And my face was red... very red. Glad I didn't publish this note on Facebook.

Then, I must admit, I started smiling (how could I not? Those were her exact words). AND at that very moment this song began playing on iTunes (fyi, the song is called "I've Never Found A Girl" by Eddie Floyd, from the Stax-O'-Soul sampler, which I got from DeaconBlues1103's excellent blog)...

Yeah, so... it was all too perfect. I wonder how many times we beat ourselves up over something that's really nothing? Or assume the absolute worst about something when it may very well be the absolute opposite? I think I probably do it quite a bit. Also... now... I am glad that I did one of those things that I normally don't do. This whole "living life balls out" thing has been pretty good, so far. Honestly, even before this happened, it just felt better, to take those chances and say those things and whatnot. Lastly, 7 years can be covered in a single sentence ("Good, but lonely."), but how fast can I cover 500 miles?

PS - It took forever to find a embeddable flash player for audio, so let me know if you want the code. And lastly, I really miss being able to indent? Anyone know how to do it?

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