A Story About Childhood Crushes: First Love - When You're Eight and In Love

Childhood crushes seem like a silly thing once we're grown up and either recall our own childhood crushes or know a child who is living through a "love story" of his own. Silly and meaningless as childhood crushes seem, however, it's funny how we recall them so clearly and with such fondness.

My very first "boyfriend" was a boy who lived next door. We were both four years old when we'd play together (often, but not always, from two different sides of the chain-link fence between our houses). One favorite pastime we shared involved giggling at the contents of an
in-ground garbage receptacle. It didn't really seem to me to be a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship, of course. The thing was, I knew I was a girl and he was a boy; so I guess I was aware that there was something "different" about this particular friendship, as compared to friendships with other little girls. He, on the other hand, seemed oblivious to the fact that I was a girl. I'd often try to get his head of out of the garbage container by trying to engage him in imaginary play. He would point out why my imaginary scenarios were not realistic. Of course, he didn't use the word, "realistic". He generally said stuff like, "If you have a white horse in the cellar how come I never saw it?" and "Girls can't be firemen."

Once, I got a bad flu that kept me in the house for several days. He waited for my father to come home from work, called him over, and gave him a particularly special marble to give to me as "get well" gift. I knew then that he really was my boyfriend.

He moved before first grade. That was, as they say, the end of him.

Third grade - now THAT was an affair to remember!

In third grade I found true love. A few seats back in the row of desks there was a very handsome, scrubbed-looking, dark-haired, big-dark-eyed, boy who wore yellow or pink ironed shirts with a black string tie (which is what boys wore in those days). I first noticed him when he threw spit-balls at the back of my head; and when I turned to look to see who was responsible. I could tell the spit balls were intended only to get me to turn around and look at him. He grinned when I turned around. As soon as I turned back around in my seat again I felt another spit ball and looked back at him again. He continued to grin, and I'm not sure I've ever, since then, seen someone so obviously immaturely and openly delighted at capturing my attention.

Third grade can seem awfully young for children to be thinking about "true love", but I don't think it's at all unusual for children to be that young. In fact, I'd venture to guess that if most little boys didn't have a Little Red-Haired Girl in their life, and if most little girls didn't have a Shroeder after whom to pine the way Lucy pines after Shroeder, Charles Schultz would never have included these elements in his story lines. In my own third-grade romance, I was "The Little Red-Haired Girl" in one "Charlie Brown's" life - only, unlike The Little Red-Haired Girl in the Charlie Brown specials, I was more than well aware that one particularly handsome boy seemed to be "in love" with me.

Being the target of seemingly unending spit balls, of course, is often a sign that a "guy" is in love with you. It's not something one can be completely sure of at first. After all, spit balls can also be a sign that a boy just likes to tease or otherwise make trouble. They can even be a sign that boy actually doesn't like you. The only real way to tell what a boy's spit-ball motives are is to turn around and look at him. If he likes you he'll have a certain look on his face, along with a silly grin. If he has any look other than that telltale look I just mentioned, and if there's no silly grin, figuring out his motives can take more time and figuring. It takes very little time and no figuring to recognize the signs of a spit-ball thrower's admiration of you. Unlike some of the more uncertain relationships we have when we're older, there's no mystery or ambiguity involved in such an early and true "love".


Our romance blossomed. Because I had to pass his desk to get to my first-row seat I would stop to talk with him before the bell was about to signal the start of class. Although I went to recess (and the girls' room, of course) with my girlfriends (girls and boys were separated in those days), he'd wait to talk to me as I passed by his desk on the way to lunch. At recess he would play on the boys' side of the schoolyard, needless to say. I, of course, played on the girls' side. Most of the time I just took it for granted that he disappeared somewhere in the crowd of running-around boys. Once in a while, though, we'd find ourselves standing on our respective sides of the line that divided the girls' side of the schoolyard from the boys' side, and we'd share a quick few words.

He and I began to try to figure out how we could play together after school. Neither of our mothers would make any effort to allow that to happen. In fact, on Parents' Day the two mothers got together to discuss their "concerns" about this romance that had become the talk of the class. His friends and my girlfriends were at times disgusted by our romance, but sometimes our classmates just accepted that we were "An Item" even if they couldn't seem to understand it. It was an innocent kind of love - free of the guile and games that sometimes come with new relationships when people are older - and his open admiration of me and the delight he didn't try to hide when we talked showed in the eyes and the smile and the voice that I can still see and hear today.

As Winter turned into Spring that year, our class was going to put on a square-dancing performance for the mothers (fathers weren't generally at the schools in those days because they worked). As the teacher began to explain the new plans for the performance she commented that boys and girls would be partners (I was delighted at this) and that she would assign the partners (what a disappointment this was for me). For a few seconds thoughts began flying through my head: "I don't want to dance with anyone but him. The other boys are OK, I guess (well, not ALL of them), but how can there be a dance with me dancing with one of those other boys?" Where will he be?"

It took only a name or two before she announced that my sweetheart and I would be partners. I thought it was pure luck that she arranged for us to be partners. "Whew, that was lucky!" I thought. I didn't use these words in my head, but a "What-are-the-odds?" kind of thinking made me ever so grateful that all would be right with the world when the square dancing began.

When my partner joined me to get ready for the first dance lesson, he and I were both happy beyond words. For weeks before the performance we would practice dancing. He had the soft, sweaty, hands of a little boy, but he always smelled really good and looked really handsome.

At the time, I was well aware that (even with their concerns) the parents and teacher involved saw my "true love" and me as "cute little eight-year-olds with a crush" (even if it were a crush that shouldn't be allowed to "get too out of hand"). I knew, though, that there wasn't anything "cute" about our "love". It was real, and it was important to us. More than once I'd heard someone grown up mention "childhood crushes", and I wasn't pleased to hear this term applied to what my special friend and I shared.

My third-grade sweetheart and I may have looked like "adorable" (as I heard it described) little eight-year-olds with a fierce crush to our teacher and the mothers at the performance. To us, we were people in love - and I would not want to deprive any other eight-year-old or six-year-old of such a wonderful thing to remember forever.


The day of the performance was a beautiful day, and as we promenaded out before the audience of eager mothers I felt as if I had reached some high point in my young life. He and I, both conscientious little people, performed our dance without mistake. I heard murmurs from the crowd about the fact that the little boy with black hair and the little girl in the pastel blue skirt had liked one another for quite a while. (Of course, my girlfriends had told their mothers, who were in the crowd.) As the music stopped, and the boys bowed while the girls curtsied, I knew our romance would soon come to an end. He had recently told me of his family's plan to move to a different school district.

We said "good-bye" at the end of third grade and talked about how we could ask our mothers to bring us to see each other over the Summer. Of course, that never happened. When September and fourth grade came it did take me a little while to get used to being boyfriend-less again. It took longer for me to stop kind of missing him. Still, I eventually did forget about him - mostly. For reasons I almost can't explain, though, this third-grade romance that culminated in a square dance on a nice May day was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Even in third grade, I thought square-dancing was - well - "square" (and not in the geometrical sense of the word); so it's probably not necessary for me to point out that after that one, special, May Day, I would never again square dance. It's probably also needless for me to mention that once my "special friend" moved away I would also never again love anyone else in quite the same way.