Idea #48 - Hang Your Head

This post was inspired by #48 in No One Cares What You Had for Lunch by Maggie Mason.


You know that feeling in your gut, that sick/excited feeling you get when you have a crush on someone and you know you are going to see them? This is what I lived with the the entire 4th grade. His name was Tim Schmidt. I will never forget that name. Blonde, blue-eyed, total jock (at the age of 10), most popular boy in our class. We had exchanged more than a few smiles and glances and my friends had managed to let him know how I felt, but his feelings were a mystery. Did he like me? Did he like Lisa who was getting boobs already? Would he ask me to "go" with him? The questions were endless and painful.

Of course every girl knew that you had to pretend you didn't like him, you had to play hard to get, like you could care less about that jerk! "Boys are gross", was our mantra as we giggled away in the corner about whether we would be able to sit by them on the bleachers at the high school basketball game that weekend, something I had not been cool enough to do yet.

My grandma visited one weekend and as my grandma always did, she showed up with some new clothes for me that she sewed by hand. The neat thing about this was that no one else had any clothes that looked like mine and the not-so-neat thing about this was that no one else had any clothes that looked like mine.

Then I spotted it and a light seemed to shine down from above. The one-piece jean pantsuit with red trim around the ankles and a zipper that started at my crotch and went all the way up to the top of the collar. Wow. This was the coolest thing I had ever seen and I couldn't wait for Tim Schmidt to see me in it. If he didn't love me after seeing this little number, he didn't deserve me because obviously he had no taste or fashion sense.

You better believe I woke up early for school the next morning and jumped into that pantsuit will all my 10 year-old might, brushed my red-head until all those auburn locks practically fell out, rushed through breakfast and out the door I went, head held high, looking down on all the poor kids who had to buy their clothes at KMart.

Just when this day could not have gotten any better, our teacher announces that she is going to rearrange the seating chart. Her plan is to reseat everyone in sets of two (you know where this is going, don't you?) with their desks facing each other. My heart dropped to my stomach and I instantly had to pee. My friends all gathererd around and crossed their fingers for me with all their 10 year old girl power. The teacher starts listing the pairs.......Brad and Lisa, Jenny and Carrie, John and Brent.........the wait was excrutiating........Angie and Tim........OH MY GOD, did I just hear her right? With all the giggles from my friends and "oooooohhhhhs" from his friends, I wasn't sure I heard her correctly, but there he was heading for his desk to push it across the room to face mine with that little sideways grin on his face.

Of course I am having to act like this is the biggest pain in my ass and "how could she do this to me?" shit that he saw right through, I'm sure. There was no question in my mind that there was a God and he loved me unconditionally.

After a morning of trying my hardest not to look at him which was difficult considering how much I was in love and that fact that he was facing me directly, it was time for lunch. My friends and I were a twitter of excitement and couldn't quit talking about my good fortune. As always, after lunch, the boys played football in the courtyard and we danced around giggling, acting like idiots trying to get their attention. This is when my fortune changed and I again questioned if there was a God.

One of my friends had the great idea of 'crab-walking' around the area where they were playing football. "Yeah, that is a great idea!" (WTF?) So down on the ground we go, crab-walking little bitches, making total fools out of ourselves but thinking we are soooo cool. The boys are looking at us like we are the idiots that we are, but kind of laughing and trying not to pay attention. Then one of my friends comes over and tries to help me up and grabs my arms from behind me and starts kind of dragging me while I'm still half crab-walking and we are laughing like we are the funniest thing since Mork & Mindy. She starts saying something to get Tim's attention so he can see just how funny we are, so all the boys look over and they start cracking up. Wow, we are a even funnier than we thought, look at them laughing their asses off - let's keep this up, we are the main event on this playground! Tim is watching us and laughing and all his friends are laughing and pointing and we are doing our little two person crab-walking thing when all of a sudden, I look down, horrified.

The zipper on my totally cool homemade pantsuit broke and the entire front of my outfit is hanging open. Yes folks, I was giving an all-out peep show to the love of my life and all his friends. From neck to crotch hanging out in the wind for the entire 4th grade class to see. Little did I know at the time that showing your boobs to a boy was definitely the way to get them to notice you, however, I don't think what I had at that time could be considered "boobs". This peepshow would have been much more exciting had it been Lisa!

Not only had I just shown my soulmate my junk, but now I got to go back into the classroom and face him, literally, face him - desk to desk, for the rest of the day.

I've never been the same since.