A couple days ago I wrote about my broken heart caused by a cheerleader. She was not my first broken heart. Nor was the Hermiston Watermelon my first.
No, I have to go all the way back to kindergarten for that. I know that most boys don’t take any interest in girls until puberty rolls around the bend. But I don’t remember a time when I didn’t have a thing for little girls.
Before you start laughing, I was a little boy when I liked little girls. And now that I’m a grown man, I refuse to date anyone who is younger than my daughter, who is 30. Even I have standards, fluent as they may be.
The object of my affections in kindergarten was AndyKay Hanshew. She was the prettiest girl in Miss Maxin’s class. Don’t believe me? Here’s a photo (and yes, that’s me in Kindergarten – we would have made a cute couple I think).
I can see now that she looks a little too much like a caucasian Latoya Jackson for my tastes. But back then, she made my little heart race every time we arrived for afternoon session of kindergarten at the Lion’s Club Park building. I would have eaten paste for her. I did, on several occasions, offer her my poster paints when she had a color that she didn’t like. If my pedal car still worked, I probably would have asked her out on my first car date.
This should have been a match made in heaven. We were both from large Catholic families that went to the same church, and AndyKay (her real name was Andrea Kay), lived about four doors down the road from me. We were the only ones our age in the neighborhood, so we played together a lot.
I don’t think she ever saw me as anything but a friend. Sigh, my the first of my BFFs.
I didn’t really have a crush on her until the end of year kindergarten program. I can’t really recall any part I played in it, but AndyKay had the starring role. I can still remember her on stage, a little spotlight shining upon her, her smiling thumb wearing a little dress, and Andrea moving it in time to the rhythm of Thumbelina playing on the phonograph. I was hooked.
Unfortunately, good Catholic family that they were, the girls were shuffled off to St. Anthony’s parochial school and I went downhill from there. No really. The public school I went to was located at the bottom of the hill on 27th Street. AndyKay and I would pass one another in our neighborhood from time to time after that, but we no longer had shared the same common interests… the poster paints, snack time, and a dress wearing appendage.
It took me some time to get over AndyK. It wasn’t until third grade I got my next crush, Joleta Cutler. I was probably her first stalker. I would ride my bike past the house she lived in. It was beyond where I was allowed to ride my bike, but I didn’t care. I was in love. She moved away at the end of the school year. I found her on classmates.com but she didn’t remember me. But I still remember her.
I should have just given up on girls after these two episodes of unrequited love. At least my fourth and fifth grade girlfriend, Karen Teichrow, liked me back. But we wanted different things in life – I wanted to be a doctor and she wanted to play doctor. I wish I knew what that meant back then. Damn!
I gave up girls after that. I was just going to live the life of a swinging bachelor. And I did, until eighth grade. It was there that I first cast my eyes on Cindy Longnecker.
We were in shop together at McKnight Middle School. Ah, shop. A string of misshapen clay ashtrays, metal pendants that were stripped of any aesthetics and wood cutting boards. I never made a wood cutting board. I made a hydroplane instead. As I said, a total dweeb, a creative dweeb true, but a dweeb nonetheless.
I didn’t really care about what I made in shop class. I wasn’t allowed to use any of the cool power tools because I refused to watch the filmstrips and take the safety test. I found the whole “caveman tools” concept of the filmstrips beneath me. I already knew how to use the tools – the test was a waste of time.
Besides, I was in love. Again. She was so pretty and I was madly in love. Cindy had transferred to the school mid year and I had never seen a more beautiful girl. I could think of nothing else. Looking back it was a good thing I wasn’t cleared to use the table saw. I’m sure I would have sawed off some important pieces of me every time Cindy sauntered by in her endless wardrobe of mini skirts.
I didn’t have the guts to tell her that she was the one for me. I couldn’t even muster the courage to talk to her in class, even to say hi. Every time she was within ear shot, I would come down with a chronic case of VC – verbal constipation.
Finally, I hatched a plan to let her know my deepest feelings for her. It was a brilliant idea and nothing could go wrong.
I wrote her a love letter. I tortured over that letter for hours, writing it, then rewriting it. I wrote the final draft in purple pen, telling her in the most romantic words I knew that if she wanted to know who her secret admirer was, I would have the pen in class with me that day. Told you. It was a perfect plan!
The next day, I arrived at shop class first. I had scarfed my lunch down in record time. With no one around, I slipped the letter into her project locker.
When the bell rang, Cindy went to her locker. The letter fell out of it, just as planned. She carried it back to her work table and sat down. She opened it. A smile came across her face, which then turned into laughter.
Things had gone horribly wrong. I winced as she opened her mouth. She began to read the letter out loud to the whole class. Every syllable of every word of my longing for her rang through the classroom, the chorus of laughter getting louder and louder.
I could have just died. Thankfully, I had resisted the temptation to sign my name to it. The purple pen quickly found its way into a trash can, never to see the light of day again.
Me, well, I survived it all. I even loved again. And again. If Cindy Longnecker couldn’t snuff out my dreams of happily ever after that day, how could any ex-whatevers down the road kill it?
Out on the Treasure Coast, googling Cindy Longnecker’s name so I can see if she came to her senses yet,
– Robb