Running into MC

Okay so I am almost ashamed to blog about this.  I mean I am so in love with my husband it is crazy, and we have had a great reunion since I returned from Utah.  He is really the one for me, but I have to tell you about how I ran into an old flame while in Utah and we had a little chat.  I saw him after many years, at our 20 year reunion in 2007 and we had a semi-awkward conversation then.  When I look back upon that, I wished I had been more comfortable talking to him.  I wish I'd been brave enough to clear the air about a few things.  I mean what is the deal with past crushes?  You don't think about them for years, you are happy you ended up with your spouse, but when you see that person in real life you get all flustered, at least I do.  It's embarrassing!  I was glad to have had this second chance this past week to make it right with a better conversation and say what I wanted to say.  Let me give you some back up here.

MC moved into our elementary school when we were in 4th grade.  All the girls swooned and somehow I was the lucky one to get highest ratings from him on  BS's "rate these girls from 1-10" list.  She passed those out to all the guys in our class about twice weekly so she could get the latest stats. (I had nothing to do with these lists but didn't mind reading the results).  I don't mean to toot my own horn here, but when MC started rating me as a nine all the other boys followed his lead.  His charisma had worked it's magic on all the kids: boys and girls alike.  Poor BS who was just a lovesick girl who made treats regularly for the boys to charm them never did score as high as I did.  Maybe that is why she hated me and gave me her smallest valentines with the least amount of conversation hearts.  We had nothing to converse about really.

Perhaps it was BS's envy that spurred her to tell me a mean story close to the end of our 5th grade year.  I had been riding my wave of popularity for a solid year and a half getting good ratings.  Also, during any in-season sport I'd get a 'touchdown', a 'home run', or a 'three-pointer' made in my honor.  This dedicated sports-move to your crush was probably MC's idea as well.  It sure was good for a girl's ego.  It's really too bad that my popularity did not follow me into my high school years.  My competition and shyness became too great I guess.  On second thought, maybe it was best that I got knocked down a peg or two during that time.  My glory days were between the ages of 11 and 13, all down hill from there...  Until I was in my twenties : )

So, BS's story was this:  She told me that one day when I hadn't been on the blacktop watching MC shoot hoops in my honor at recess, that in my absence he showed everyone how he really felt about me.  He shot an air-ball telling everyone that was for me.  That was a pretty low blow.  It never occurred to me that she could have made the entire thing up.  I was crushed and from then on my relationship with MC was, as you can imagine, very guarded.  When he asked me to 'couples skate' at the classic roller rink field trip, I almost said no.  Man where our hands sweaty that day... A couple years later at a middle school dance he asked me to dance and I had to clarify "YOU want to dance with ME out on THAT dance floor?"  "Yeah" he replied.  I had to be sure because the rumor was that some girls where being tricked by mean boys.  They'd ask a girl if she wanted to dance, she'd say yes and then their reply was "okay, go ahead and dance by yourself then."  Pretty low... Basically evidence that middle school sucks.

Eventually after being ignored by MC long enough (I'm sure my dance etiquette didn't help), we parted ways.  Well, really we parted something that never really made it beyond the rate these girls list, or the roller rink during couple's skate.  I noticed once when walking down the halls looking inside classes, that he sat at a desk of mine from a different period.  In my frustration at being un-noticed I started leaving cruel l notes written in pencil on this shared desk for him to see.  He'd write mean things back and so our love/hate relationship continued... Until we got caught by the teachers and I had a scary brush with the English teacher who pulled me out of class one day to give me a handwriting test.  I was scared to death!  I must have passed though.  No charges were ever drawn up. whew!  The next month or so I moved on to Frank E.  I think it drove MC a bit crazy, but I could be wrong.  He wrote in my year book that year, "How's Frankie Baby?"

So when I saw this middle aged slightly balding man in his front yard fixing his sprinklers I just had to pull up beside him and call out "Is that MC?!"  I told him sorry for all the mean notes in English class.  I joked that I had repented and he said he'd done the same.  I introduced my now 11 year old son to my old crush and we talked about his cool red hair.  It felt good not to act uncomfortable.  After all he married a nice girl from my neighborhood and they have 5 kids of their own.  There's no reason we can't be friendly right?  Then as we drove away, my son asked me if I still loved his Dad.  He said he noticed that I didn't seem to want to stop talking to MC.  I guess deep down I still felt a bit like this girl.

I think she rates somewhere around a 9.2
Next time I will possibly get up enough courage to ask if BS's story was true or just BS.