Ah, young love

I was friends with this kid in 6th grade who was a "skater", a rollerblader to be exact (a distinction that would later become vital to social standing). He was cute and funny, shorter than me and a little crude, which is probably why I was so drawn to him. I considered myself a good kid, I never got detention or turned my homework in late or anything like that. So hanging out with this short, quirky boy was fun, especially when I was able to shock him by cursing or by trying rollerblading tricks. We were really good friends and hung out and talked on the phone almost every day after school and during the summer. One day he asked me a supposedly hypothetical question that would turn out to be one of the first of what I considered romantic sentiments in my life.

"So, what would you do if you really liked a girl and she was really awesome to hang out with, but she was pretty much a total dog? And what if all your friends said it didn't matter and that you should just go for it but that you just couldn't get over how much of a dog she was?"

I was no fool. I knew that he didn't hang out with any other girls as much as he hung out with me, so I was pretty certain that he was talking about me. I had harbored a crush on him for the entire school year, so I pushed aside my emotions and tried to ignore how stung I was that he thought I was ugly.

"Well," I said, "I would go for it. If you get along with someone it shouldn't matter if they're a dog or not. For example, I like you a lot, even though you're so short."

Ok, so perhaps I didn't manage to push aside ALL my emotions.

I don't remember exactly how he responded, but we kept being friends and he never asked me out so I imagine he wasn't flattered at my pointing out his height deficiency. However, the point of this memory is that I was actually flattered that a good looking boy was considering asking me out even though he thought I was ugly. It didn't occur to me to be angry or hurt, I just accepted his appraisal of me and that was that.


Yes, he may have called me ugly directly to my face, but it seemed like such a nice thing at the time that a 12 year old boy would consider dating someone who wasn't pretty. At that time in life (and ever after, I would come to find out) boys just went for the cutest girls with the prettiest hair or the biggest boobs and "dated" for a week before breaking up and finding a new crush. So to my line of thinking, it was touching that he was actually attracted to my personality.

And, for the sake of posterity, I wasn't even really a dog, I just had glasses that were too big for my face and I didn't understand how to dress to accommodate my changing body. This was proved to me when, later that year, I got contact lenses and started wearing tighter shirts and got asked out by three boys in one week, two of whom later got into a fist fight at a roller-rink over who got to hold my hand in the couples' skate.

Is it any wonder that we are all so screwed up regarding relationships and self-esteem?