Southern Belle in Training

Fashion, Travel & Lifestyle Blog || Est. 2012 || Virginia Beach, VA

May 7, 2013

(Hilarious) lessons learned from my first crush.

     (A couple weeks ago I wrote this post as a prequel to this story.)

      I am a firm believer in trying not to take life too seriously. One mindset that I'm trying to adopt is to enjoy laughing at myself when I do something stupid or silly, instead of getting mad at myself. One of the best ways to put that into play was by stepping back in time to my freshman year of high school...
   
     There had been guys that I'd thought were cute and claimed to have "huge crushes on" since first grade, but my freshman year of high school was the first time that I really fell for someone. To this day I'm not sure that I've had as much of an obsession an admiration for a guy since then. I was homeschooled for most of elementary school and all of my junior high years. I had guy friends, but homeschoolers aren't really pressured as much into dating as much when they're younger (which I think is GREAT). But by freshman year I was in public high school and I saw all around me how my peers were dating and sleeping around.  I figured that I was a bit behind on the dating thing and needed to get my act together.

     The guy that I fell so hard for (I'm going to call him "Bob") actually did not go to my high school. He was homeschooled and in the 8th grade. Yup, I went after a younger man. #cougarstatus ;-) Anyways, we had known each other as aquaintences for many years. I had been homeschooled for elementary and middle school, and since there weren't a lot of homeschoolers in my town at this time I pretty much knew all of the other homeschooling families. He and I used to do middle school youth events at a different church when we were in 5th and 6th grade, and our moms were friendly with each other.

     By this time "Bob" had started coming to the youth group at the new church that my family attended  (which is where we still go). The youth group was really small and only had like between 8-12 kids that went on most nights, so they welcomed people from other churches to come as well, people like "Bob." I didn't have a very good freshman year and it was hard for me to fit in with my peers in public school, so spending Sunday nights with the youth group at my church became the highlight of my week. Youth group was my life. The two leaders saw early on how much I enjoyed planning things and they put me in charge of planning most of the events and field trips. I organized bowling trips, movie nights, an apple picking excursion in September, and an end-of-the-year family softball game in June.  I also got to organize the youth group bulletin board in our church. Being involved gave me something to do and a way to use my spiritual gifts.

     But eventually, just being involved with some of the leadership stuff of my youth group wasn't cutting it anymore. One of the others girls that went to youth group started liking a boy that was also in the group.  She was a year younger than me, and I just couldn't bare the thought of her ending up with a boyfriend before me. I'd always liked Bob as a friend, but around October/November of freshman year I started seeing him in a different light.

     One night in early November as youth group was wrapping up, I was in the church kitchen grabbing something. Bob followed me in and came right up to me and said "Do you "like" like me?" I looked at him right in the eye, smiled really big, and said "Yes!" He just kind of stood there, so then I said "Do you "like" like me too?" But right as he was about to answer both of our dads came in to pick us up, and he never answered.

     Well, being an impatient 14 year old Miss ALK, I simply could not wait any longer to find out Bob's true feelings for me. So the day after I resorted to my good friend Yahoo! Mail to help me solve my dilemna. This all happened a couple months before I got a Facebook account, and I also didn't have texting then, so I had to take things old school. Here is the real copy of my first message to Bob. I have highlighted anything that since reading this again several years later I am confused about or embarresssed by.



Light blue: I have no idea why the subject of this e-mail was "dance ideas for youth group." My youth group didn't have dances, nor did we dance as a group. Maybe I did this so that if my parents somehow found this e-mail they wouldn't suspect what it was about?! Because you know, 14 year old crushes that develop in youth group are soooooo scandalous.
Yellow: Well gosh I just cut right to the chase! Today I would never be so blunt with a guy.
Violet: "It's fine if you don't" What?!?! I just confessed to someone that I had feelings for them and then I follow it up with "but well you know if you don't feel the same way whatever."
Royal blue: Nothing like letting Bob know that I'm just dying of anticipation to know if I'm the love of his (youth group) life.
Green: Proving my point with some classic teenage vocabulary; the quintessential "duh"
Maroon: What's better than ending the most important e-mail of my life with a bad spelling error?
Aquarmarine: I'm basically foreshadowing here and not even giving myself the chance to ever leave the friend zone.
   

     I think I forgot to put at the start of this whole thing that both of our parents had decided that we were still too young to date, way before I even liked Bob. But out of the two of us his parents were way more strict about it. So technically none of this was even supposed to be happening, but of course I wasn't about to let parents' rules get in the way of love. (I'm being 100% sarcastic, just so y'all know. This whole post is just me making fun of myself and how I acted 4 years ago :-)).


     Want to see Bob's response? Stay tuned tomorrow for that post!


     xoxo Miss ALK


     P.S. As much as I enjoy giggling at these old messages, I realize now that I was way too young to be so focussed on having a relationship. The purpose of this post and the ones to follow is not my way of saying that I think 14 year olds should be in serious relationships... but quite the opposite! I wish now that I had taken more time that year to grow my faith in Jesus and focus on having good friendships with guys and girls, instead of obsessing over something that I didn't have. Turns out my parents were right about 14 being too young to have a serious boyfriend! It takes a lot for me to admit when they're right. ;-)
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1 comment

  1. hahahahahahahahahahaha.... this is so funny!!
    I'm glad the post will be tomorrow and not a week from now! haha....
    Glad you shared this ;)

    Em

    ReplyDelete

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