My Crushes (II)

I was about to launch my own website, with a blog entry called "namesake" to accompany it. However, everything is done, but one verification process is stuck now, so I have to wait for a couple days more. You might be surprised to find out what I am up to with this website. Stay tuned.

Okay, back to my crushes. Time flies to my junior middle school. Unlike my first crush experience, this time I experienced the agony of liking someone typical to teenagers. I used to keep one-two sentence diary on my diary book (actually, it was a scheduler). It sometimes read like that, "today I talked to XXX. She laughed at my jokes. I was happy." Or something opposite to that if I had a bad day. Of course, XXX could mean a few girls. Hey, as shy as I was back then, any girls will do.

My interest was mostly on a girl whom I shall call Pincha here. She was nice and pretty. Allow me to jump ahead here. I met her just last year when I visited Beijing, when she was working. Wearing a blue outfit, a blue handbag, and some blue eye-shades, she looked as pretty as before, if not more. Of course, she grew up and now looked capable and professional. I visited her apartment, where she and her boyfriend lived together. They were getting married soon. I looked on the wall, where a large engagement picture was hung. Not exaggeration here, but she can surely pass as a movie star. We watched one episode of a long Korean TV series together.

Flash back to junior high school again. Both she and I were not tall, so we were at the second row, separated by a walking aisle. Four rows in the classroom, and each week we switched rows (1 became 2, 2 became 3, 3 became 4 and 4 became 1). You can imagine how I hated the week when I was in 1 and she was in 4. However, even in weeks when we were only separated by an aisle, we did not talk too much. Most of the opportunities were when we discussed the answers to different problem sets. One other topic is TV. When I found out some TV shows she was watching, I would watch those shows religiously also ("People on the Edge" and "Tokyo Love Story" are two that I can remember of now). Just to have some topics with her. Sometimes she did not get a chance to watch one episode, so I would fill her in during the lunch break.

I think that was the second year of my junior high school years. I tried to think of some good birthday gift for her (Given that I still remembered that, I must have put a lot of thoughts in it). Eventually, I got this small plastic box containing 4 little yellow chicks in it (sorry, it might be a gift she sent me for my birthday. I could not remember exactly). But that was not the main surprise. I actually asked her whether she was free in her birthday. She said yes, and I said I would visit her. I showed up at home, with an audio cassette. That day, we sang songs together and recorded a full cassette. We made a double in the end and each of us kept one copy. I kept my copy until I finished college and was leaving for the States.

So where did I come up this silly idea of recording songs on a cassette for birthday? I do not know. I believe at that time I must have thought that is the best idea in the world. Think about it (The gift was special, unique, one of a kind, with each other's voice on it. What if we get married eventually and showed that to our grandkids? How romantic your grandparents used to be!) Anyway, I do not think anyone in the world knew this episode (of course Pincha and maybe some of her close friends. But hey, who still remember that?), but now you know that. Believe it or not, if you tease me with this episode, I will still brush.

Now it was the final days of junior middle school. We had the photo day. I vividly remember that she had a new coffee-colored long skirt, completely standing out from the crowd (You have to keep in mind that the girls in my junior high school dressed quite conservatively. Their bodies were changing, but they tried hard to hide them). Before then, "cute" or "pretty" was how I categorized girls, and now I had a new dimension called "beautiful."

We got in the same senior high school. We remained as good friends. I visited her home once a while, and knew her parents quite well (Actually, two years ago when I went back home, Pincha and I planned to meet. Pincha told me that her father was in hospital, and I actually visited her father with a bunch of flowers. Very sketchy!). For a while, I wanted her to know my crush on her when I was in high school. However, as times passed by, I began to stop caring. I convinced myself: I have bigger dreams to pursue, so committing to a relationship is the last thing I want to do. This covered up the real reason: my inability to take any risks in intimate relationships.

Until this day, I am not sure when she knew my secret crush back in middle school. I suspect that she (or even her parents) knew along. Isn't the cassette thing obvious enough?