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I've been thinking lately about my first crush. Or two. I had just turned twelve, and this boy named James gave me a pretty little white handkerchief with pink ruffles around the edges. We were in the same Nature Club and we were both home schooled, and I was quite flattered, to the point of wearing the handkerchief in my hair and riding my bike past his house a lot. But then one day, late in the spring, I was taking a standardized achievement test with a bunch of other home schoolers when I met a boy named Peter. Peter was sitting in the row next to mine, and I kept turning around and peeking back at him through my eyelashes. Where James was pale and blonde haired with this somewhat doofy look in his eyes, Peter was tan with black hair trimmed into that very-cool-for-twelve-year-olds bowl cut. He was dead hot, I thought, for a prepubescent boy and all, and I had to devise a plan to meet him. So I went home and got out my typewriter (it was the old fashioned kind my mom had nabbed at a curriculum sale for $5) and I typed up an exhaustive two page personal questionairre. It asked extremely pertinent questions like DO YOU PREFER EATING WITH A SPOON OR A FORK?, WHAT IS YOUR BIRTHDATE, and DO YOU HAVE A GIRLFRIEND? And for processing purposes, of course, WHAT IS YOUR PHONE NUMBER? Peter and I talked for hours the very first time I called him, and every day after for almost a month. It was about this time that I decided to ride by James' house and squirt him with Squeeze-It bottles full of ice cold water - you know, to let him know it was over. When I found him alone in his front yard, playing with G.I. Joes, I couldn't believe my luck, and I let him have it before he ever had a chance to look up. He squealed and spouted tears as I squirted him mercilessly, and I couldn't help but laugh as he tried to run from the streams of icy water. I knew it wasn't nice, but neither was breaking up. Better to do it this way and help him move on than give him hope and break his heart later down the line, I figured. This was just a part of life, I told myself. Better get used to it. When I was finished, James just stood there dumbfounded on the bristly summer lawn in his soaking wet "What Would Jesus Do?" tee shirt, drenched and dumped, with water dribbling down his legs. It was a sad sight and I couldn't help but grimace a little from my perch on the bike. And then suddenly, as if on cue, James' long haired Christian rocker father, fresh in from rehab, strode out into the yard, oblivious to the drama that had just ensued. He lit a cigarette, slapped his son on a wet shoulder, and asked me in that "isn't my son great" voice why I hadn't been around to see James for so long. "I'm too busy with my boyfriend," I responded with a toss of my long blonde braid. "Peter." "Peter?" repeated James' dad with a confused look. "But I thought James was your boyfriend!" I snorted. "No." Then I pushed my bicycle into motion with a little "hmph" and zipped away, my long blonde braid flying out behind me like a flag. When I got home from my heartbreaking mission, I told my mother what I had done. Much to my surprise, she informed me that wasn't very nice at all, and said that Jesus would do something bad to me now, or something to that effect. Whether my mother personally told Jesus herself or not, or if it was strictly a coincidence, Peter stopped calling me shortly after the Squeeze-It bottle incident. I pretended I didn't care, but clearly, I haven't forgotten it. So meanwhile, while Peter wasn't calling, James and I were in a full blown war, booby trapping each other, chasing each other on bikes, shooting each other with kid guns of one kind or another, and name calling. Ah, love at twelve. Not too different from love at twenty-one. And it's taught me a lesson. If you're tempted by a cuter man, if you've got his number and things are going all right, if you carelessly crush the heart of another... don't tell mom. She might tell Jesus on you. xoxo Christine
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