My First Crush…

Write about your first crush.

I’m only answering this question because I didn’t have any great topics today. So I’ll tell you about my dreamy seventh-grade crush. There are no photos of him to share since I lost my yearbook. Here’s an approximation.

Kevin Murray was a year ahead of me in school but we were in Spanish class together. I thought he was both hilarious and incredibly cool, because he owned rock and roll albums. I didn’t have a record player that would play them yet.

He picked on me a lot, but it didn’t bother me because I was a new person in junior high and was one of the popular kids in the academic track. We all picked on each other and had nicknames for each other. Man, seventh grade was GREAT. We had young, hip teachers and spent a lot of time writing plays based on Star Trek and publishing the school newsletter on mimeo paper. Mmm, that smell.

Back to Kevin. I thought that long (for 1971) red hair, those green eyes, and the freckles made him look like a sexy leprechaun. Or something. Anyway, he showed me he liked me by randomly showing up on my street and pretending to steal my new, very cool, red-white-and-blue Murray Eliminator bike (same name as him, so obviously it was his).

I showed I liked him by riding my bike around his house in case he might come outside, and drooling over his parents’ incredible blue Citröen car.

We had a fun summer of innocent pre-teen flirtation. My dad found us very funny, pretending to be annoyed by each other. He kept telling me “that boy likes you.”

Then I was moved to South Florida despite my protests, and that was it. No email, no texting, no Facebook, so no contact. If letters were exchanged, I don’t recall. No, I do not need to find him. I’ll just treasure my dim memories.

I pined for Kevin until the summer after ninth grade when I met the boy I’d really swoon for. That’s another story.

Weird postscript: by the time my younger son, an actual Irish boy, was a toddler, I realized who he looked like. Eww.

On the other hand, I now have an idea of what adult Kevin would have looked like, though I don’t think he grew to be 6’3”.