I have never entered a writing contest, I never thought I was good enough. Thanks K, for sending me this link and believing that I can write for a contest. So here goes, my entry for the Blogadda and Pringoo contest.
My first crush ....
Your first crush is like the first time you try a new flavour of ice cream. Once it’s over you don’t really remember why you choose that one anyways, was it the colour or the name or it was just an easy choice. What you do remember is the feeling – the heady little brain freeze, the spinning, the fuzzy feeling and contentment.
He did that to me.
Like the first kiss when you are so excited and can hardly believe that it is actually happening. The weakness in your knees and the sinking feeling in your tummy are mixed with the random, mundane thoughts running through your head. You want to remember that moment so much that you end up forgetting most of it. Years later you think about that moment and you remember bits and pieces of that random thought, the unnecessary details like the song that played in the background and the way the perfume on his shirt smelt.
When I was asked to write about my first crush the first thing I obviously did was Facebook stalk him.
I was not sure it was him, till I checked out our common friend list. And well guess what, He is now a man! Like a man with a belly and a moustache. YUCK.
It totally burst my bubble and I wish I hadn’t done the Facebook stalking thing. In my mind he still was the perfect fourteen year old school hero until this moment.
Back in dreamland, School, life and everything I knew back then had changed after the first time I spoke with him.
Life would never be the same. I had discovered this other species in a whole new light. Very different from how I thought of them earlier, suddenly hitting them and punching them wasn’t cool, running around with them in the school corridors became a no - no. All at once being shy and being a girl was cool and so unlike the person I used to be.
I would now wait hours to see him at drama practice at the end of the day. Plan for hours of how I would react when he would speak to me and when he would – the few lines in the play we were performing and practicing for, something always got stuck in my gut, like someone stuffed cotton right in the middle and I could neither swallow or spurt but just be speechless with a constipated expression on my face.
He, totally unaware of my plight owned the room and all the people in it.
He would walk with this swagger as if he ruled the world. He was tall and funny and charming. His tie was never in place and when he smiled, oh when he smiled I could blush standing a million miles away.
But he would never know.
He would never know that every song I heard back then made me feel that it was written for him and me. That when I saw jo jeeta wahi sikandar, heard the song phela nasha and saw Ayesha Jhulka fall on a bed of saw I pictured myself in that frame singing for him.
He would never know how embarrassed I felt when I met him at a social gathering and I had been made to wear a frock by my mother (yes, during that era in 1980’s ten/eleven year old girls usually dressed in frocks!) while all the other girls were dressed in skirts and trousers.
I felt like a child. I felt confused and angry at my mother for making me wear that frock because he never looked at me. That, he would never know.
He would never know that I struggled to delay getting braces because I didn’t want him to see me with metal teeth.
He would never know awesomely and amazingly he changed my life in more ways than one.
And one day, he left school and moved away. Just like that.
He would never know he broke my heart and that was just a beginning to so many more to come.
If I could I would go back in time and tell him how I felt and just leave it at that. Stop and freeze time with that boy I knew. The cool, carefree fourteen year old.
I go back now to his Facebook page and wonder if I should add him as a friend.
Would he remember me? The girl in the green and red frock? The girl with the bug teeth and the pony tail? I wonder if he would remember the girl whose cheeks turned purple and who also cried in front of him when someone stole her crackle chocolate.
Something’s never change! There is the familiar cotton ball in my gut and my fingers can’t move the mouse to click on ‘add as a friend’, will he remember me?
