Crushes. I have been blessed and plagued with them since my earliest memories. They are so fatalistic and so compelling. There is only one thing worse than having a heart wrenching, tumor like crush growing in your chest cavity - getting what you want. There is no earthly way for any girl to live up to the expectation and fantasy of a real live, full blown crush. Yet, this truism doesn’t seem to stop a soul from having them, pining after them, dreaming about and pursuing them. The let down is like a slow terrible cocaine hangover you had to ease with Georgi vodka, but the not running the race is fatal.

At Crown Point Kindergarden in Bath OH when I was 5 or 6, I clearly recall a girl with short blond hair and corduroy dresses named Christie. I loved her with all my 5 year old heart. Whatever love means to little children that doesn’t involve their families - well, I don’t clearly recall, but it was strong and painful and made me sad for some reason. I don’t know what I wanted from Christie. Just to play together, sit next to her in music class, to put my mat close to hers during naptime, to hold her hand on top of the fort in the playground? All this seems very quaintly possible, and I probably did want to do all of that with her, but I wanted something else too. Something that made me ache when I thought of her, something that made me sad even when I was close to her. There was this episode where my Father helped Christie’s mother when she was stuck on a patch of ice heading up the long driveway to the school. She and I both sat in the car side by side with the windows steamed up, am radio playing John Lanigan in the Morning, and a biting cold in the air, together - right next to one another - while my dad did something outside that made the car move. I honestly don’t recall if we even spoke. I think we just smiled a little and waited. I was instantly happy, but sad as well, because I knew we would have to get out of the car and go to school, and that everything would just go back to the way it was. I knew it in the middle of my happiness - that it would end.

I guess that is the nature of crushes. The wonder and the melancholy of them as well…

My first “star” crush was when I was 8. We had just moved into a new bigger home, and I had my own room with a TV in it. For some reason I started watching a show called “Family”. I recall it was crazy boring and very dramatic. There were always problems and fights and people crying and cheating on one another. I didn’t really care about any of that pointless crap - I only cared about Kristy McNichol. I was so infatuated with her and her hair and her button nose and smile. I was convinced I would run into her someday. It never dawned on me that she must live in LA to film the show every week. I mean I knew the show was just another TV show, but I was blinded by love. I wanted to believe so much that she was a normal girl I could meet. I would lie awake every night willing myself to dream about her - and I did  - a lot. I think she was 11 or 13 or something and like way too old for me, but I couldn’t help tuning in to see her every week. My family was baffled that I wanted to watch this kind of  a TV series. It wasn’t a kid’s show at all. As I have gone back and rewatched a few episodes on YouTube, I realize it was the worst kind of schmaltzy, falsely dramatic Hollywood dreck that you could get away with then because there were only 3 channels. Truly bad stuff. I didn’t see any of it; I only saw Kristy, and felt the sadness that the show would be ending long before I wanted it to.

I’ll bore you all a bit more with my ruminations on crushing and Carrie Fisher, Roxanna Zal, my babysitter at 13, Carling Basset and many other assorted and sundry girls that invaded my reality in later posts…