Before I get into all the darkness that was the fifth grade, I want to lighten things up by telling you about the first time I was completely aware that a girl had a crush on me.
Her name was Lud. (Note the "d" at the end of the name. This indicates that I had no interest in dating her.) She was kind of pretty and was very smart. I guess I should note at this time that I knew that if I ever wound up with a girlfriend when I was a teenager, I wanted someone who was smart. Looks weren't really that important to me. I was hoping to hook up with someone who could be a study buddy. However, this was not something I wanted during the fifth grade.
Lud did make it obvious that she liked me. She would publically compliment things I did in class. If the class played a game and she was picking people to be on her team, she would choose me first. In one game, the object was to walk around the members of the class in a circle and touch one of them on the back with the ball and then try to run to a safe zone before being caught. I knew she was going to pick me, so I was prepared and I actually caught her.
While Lud appeared to meet my minimum requirements for a potential girlfriend, I still was not interested in getting to know her better. My reason? I had a big crush on her younger sister Moz.
Moz was in the fourth grade and was incredibly cute. AND she was smart. However, at this school, kids from one grade were not permitted to co-mingle with kids from another grade, so I couldn't even go up and talk to her if I wanted. But I did enjoy watching her from afar.
I probably would have been able to get to know Lud better if I didn't have a crush on her sister. Somehow, I knew it would be wrong to become friendly with Lud in an effort to somehow get closer to Moz.
I do feel terrible about what I had to do to get Lud off my back. On Valentine's Day, we're supposed to give out Valentine's to everyone in the class and put them in their bags. I gave Lud an envelope with no card inside. She never bugged me again.
This might have come back to bite me in my Junior year of high school. A select group of Juniors got to take part in the school's graduation ceremony by holding palm froves at arm's length to create a sort of tunnel for the seniors to walk through while "Pomp & Circumstance" played. I had asked how to be a part of this and I was told I needed to find a partner to walk with. I asked Lud because I felt like she was the only person I could approach, but she had already made arrangements with someone else to be her partner.
Our Senior year, Lud was voted "Most Likely to Succeed." This was a surprise, considering she wasn't really that popular, but I guess that means a lot of the other students had a great deal of respect for her. So, what happened to her? I know that she wound up becoming a school teacher and taught school in the same small farming community where my cousins Wend, Sted and Cred went to school. Apparently, her husband was the superintendent there. Oh, the wonders of the Internet.
As for Moz, I was able to find her profile on Facebook. She became a teacher in Southland, TX. She got married and appears to have had two sons. She is still rather cute. However, Lud wound up looking like my Grandma Bend when she hit 50. I would have made the right choice.
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