Crush.
One word, and it pretty much ruled my life from eighth grade on to where I am now. Well, crushes and the
computer...
I would always take
crap from the popular kids in
school, and I would never really
resist, but instead, just kind of go
Martin Luther King-style (you know,
curl up and let them do whatever)... I was always easily twice the size of the children that would torment me. I never tried to start a
fight; it went against my belief system to
intentionally hurt another person. The other boys, the ones that would
throw punches, you'd see them with
girls hanging off their arms, and you'd know that, even at the age of, like, 13 or 14, they're
getting some.
But I never fought back, never tried to risk sitting,
bored as hell, in the school's
office for a day while the other child is
revered among his
peers for finally making me snap. (It happened once. It's
not fun.)
One day, I was sitting in the
gym, where we are
forcefully required to '
mingle' with people for twenty minutes before getting twenty minutes to
procure a
lunch and
wolf it down.
I had my
GBC with me (
Game Boy Color), as it was the only way I knew of to pass the time when I was '
between books'. I had originally gotten the 'Boy for the Pokemon game about two years previously, but ditched the Poke cartridge for
Zelda DX. It's a pretty kickass game, and I was inside the
seventh dungeon-cave. I rarely
save, especially when I am in dungeons, because saving
radically changes your
location. It'll either reset you to the last building you entered, or throw you to the start of the cave. So it was a while since I last saved. I was doing well, though, and didn't worry about a thing.
Then, David came.
Now, some things are not exactly good to see. At the top of that list is a
pool of molten steel coming towards you... next on that list would be David. He is/was always looking to start a
fight, and I was in no mood to
oblige, especially since I had finally
obtained 999
rupees.
David starts walking... he goes up the
bleachers, walks straight towards me. He puts his hand over the
screen, and then, as he lifts it, flips the power switch to the "
Off" position. I am thoroughly
pissed.
I go up the bleachers, to the top, where David and friends are
laughing about what he just did. I tap David on the shoulder, and, as he turns around, land a
fist into the side of his face. He tries to
return in kind, but I duck it. About that time, the
Gestapo lunch guards that watch us decide that it's "time to break it up". I think that they might have done better to start a pool while the fight was going, but it was their descision, so the lead yells at both of us to "COME DOWN HERE!" from the top of the bleachers. I casually walk down, trying to not
tremble or
cry. Focusing on rage building inside of me because of the
ineptitude of the
school's
discipline program helped
tremendously. I stop to grab my stuff. David
grins at the crowd of
people watching us, and the
Man marches us down to the '
detention hall'. (that's what I call it; I'm not sure what the school calls it.)
I turn as I am about to leave the gym, and I make eye contact with one girl. The
shy kind -- the kind that you never really know
anything about, that
invites you to make up
stories about their past. She looks at me, and I think I see a
glint in her
eyes. Either that, or the overhead,
twenty-foot-long,
cancer-causing
fluorescent lights are
blinding her. I'm not sure, but I hope that it's the former. I smile at her as I'm taken away, lead to the hall.
I tried for the rest of the year to get close to her, but I went about it awkwardly, as I had no experience in the matter. (Still don't.)
If there was one thing I could have said to her, either in the gym that day, or at any time since, it would be "
I think you're achingly beautiful." Both in mind, and in body.