The boy I liked in the 8th grade. He had long, floppy hair like Shawn Hunter on "Boy Meets World" (thump, thump) He sat behind me in drama class, and would sometime run his little finger skateboard up and down my back. I moved away in the middle of the year, and some girls I knew took a picture of the two of us together and said they'd send it to me, but they never did.

And his name? Mike Smith. Good luck to me to find him.

Mikey? I saw him just the other day, driving a finger car down Hudson Street.

::pines::

::elms::

Retold tale.

Redhead, highschool. That's all.

Valedictorian, high school. She's a professor now. Smart chicks, man, my nemesis.

My childhood sweetheart Julie Harvey. We used to play house. She'd cook dinner on her toy oven and before eating I'd chase the monsters away from outside. I remember bringing her candy on Valentine's Day when I was four years old. I moved, and she ended up moving just down the street from me. Then she moved again when we were both about 10 or so, we exchanged a couple letters later, and that was all.

Sometimes I think about this guy I was friends with in high school. We would talk on the phone late into the night. He helped build new steps on my house and was really polite to my dad. I was totally clueless about how neat he was, and he never made a move on me, either because he was too nice or because he was clueless too. I started thinking about him again when "That 70s Show" started up, because the character of Hyde kind of reminded me of him. And I felt bad for being too stupid to appreciate him. His name was Brian.

She'd cook dinner on her toy oven

Maybe it's good it didn't work out. An all toy-food diet is bad for your heart. Unless of course you have a toy heart.

I didn't have a childhood sweetheart. Unless you count Kelly, the girl who spontaneously decided to get naked for me when I was 7. My parents were away and I was being looked after by grandma. I went over to Kelly's and said I'd be back in five minutes. She did her thing laying there on the basement rug until her grandma, who raised her, came down the stairs saying 'what in the world??' I merely watched in a kind of reverent awe that I couldn't quite comprehend. I went home and grandma yelled at me since apparently I'd been gone for two hours. Kelly moved away a year or so later I think.

Jeanette. . .a woman I met in Berkeley. She and I were both in love with this other friend, who was married at the time. Jeanette and I had a little fling, seeing that Robin was not available to either of us.

But Jeanette was basically queer, so it could not go far, even though I had transferred my "in love" feelings to her. Long flaxen hair, rimless glasses, razor wit. What's not to love?

She moved to the town I live in now, but had moved away by the time I moved here. As fate would have it, the house she lived in is around the corner from mine, and I think about her often, and would love to run into her somehow.

She has no net presence that I have been able to find, which is odd.

*sigh*

Unless of course you have a toy heart

I'm pretty sure I do.

I was in love with my best friend when I was 15. Nothing ever happened, and I can't say that it wasn't for the best, but damn did that girl make my brain hurt for a long time. I haven't talked to her in a few years, and now her email bounces and her phone is disconnected, and it's a damn shame, because I'd really like to know if she got out of everything OK.

Oh man, cmonkey, that sounds kind of familiar. I was madly in love with my best friend my sophomore year in college. He was the one who turned me on to so much great punk rock and other music - he was from Minneapolis and this was the height of the Replacements and Husker Du. When he found out about my feelings, he broke off the friendship, and I never got an explanation why. It probably never would have worked out as a relationship, but I mourn the loss of that friendship so much. I still have some letters he wrote me when I was out of town one summer. Sometimes I still dream that I find him again.

I was totally clueless in college. When I was a first-year I used to pass this fourth-year on the way to class. He sold glass bead jewelry when he wasn't in class, and I'd talk to him when I saw him. He made me a necklace (Czechoslovakian bead) a ring (two green beads), and took me out to coffee, and I had no clue. No clue! He was an English major... not even one of the soulless ones who don't like to read, but one of the good ones who do! :(

Jason L. I had a crush on his best friend Danny (who is the great nephew of the guy who played Fred Mertz) for six years and Jason was the goofy best friend. Sitting between them during sixth grade made me so deliriously happy because hey--cute guy sandwich. Whereas I totally crushed on Danny, I totally got along better with Jason.

There were these two other girls in class who were after him, Jennifer C. and Rachael. I'd help them pass notes to him and they'd always bug him about which girl he liked better. For some strange reason, though, he decided that he liked me more than them and we went out for a couple days. He asked me to keep it a secret from them, though, which I did. However, since I didn't live in the same neighborhood as he did and didn't know how to ride a bike, I couldn't hang out with him after school. I also blurted out that we were secretly "dating" at a slumber party and that was the end of that.

I saw him again later on in high school when he was in a play at the local children's theater having chosen to go to a different high school than everyone else who had been in the elementary school. His older brother, though, was at my high school and I saw him once or twice at the parties after the basketball games. Nothing came of that.

He's Google-able. He's an actor in Southern California, with a small theater company. I saw pictures and I don't think he has aged well. There's also a possibility that he's got a wife now.

But when I looked at the pictures, I instantly turned back into Amy Lawrence, pining after her Tom Sawyer.

And that's no metaphor, either. I played Amy to Jason's Tom. And I got to sing two songs, too!

On preview: halonine, I'm proud to state that I've got an English degree and I LOVE to read.

Coffee is for closers.

halonine, I can totally relate. I've told my story about the one that got away here before (I had a dream about her a few months ago that got me all worked up). She threw herself at me and I got none of it. *smack* It sucks wondering about what could have happened, doesn't it?

I actually wonder if any girl besides the mildly retarded girl who asked me to the prom had a crush on me in high school. I highly doubt it.

We actually started a website for alumni of my high school (I believe once MySpace became big, it faded away), and we had a thread where we all admitted our high school crushes. Man, were we crushy!

I went to an all-girl's school and had a, ah, dysfunctional family life and drank from the age of 14, so I never met any boys socially. When I was 16 I left home and signed up for a typing course so I could earn a living, working in a pub a night.

The course was at a local technical college, so there was an odd mix of all-girl classes doing secretarial courses and all-boy classes who were mostly on day-release courses, studying engineering one day a week while the rest of the time they worked in the manufacturing companies that once used to provide the young men of the Midlands with work, in the days before Margaret Thatcher shut them all down and the sites were razed to build call centres (which have now all moved to India).

Anyway, I had never even spoken to a boy when I started this course and there was this one, Dale, who looked like Jackson Browne (this was 1975), but kind of beefier, with big strong forearms (I love men's forearms). I absolutely adored him, worshipped him from afar. He was with the British Rail Engineering Group, and came into college twice a week.

And of course I made the mistake of telling someone in my group, and, being a small-ish town, there was always someone whose brother knew his brother, yadda, yadda, yadda, and word got back to him, resulting in me being subjected to catcalls and yelling from his friends whenever I set foot within 50 yards of them, really horrible, cruel, humiliating stuff. I was short, dumpy, my clothes were old-fashioned, I was the most uncool person ever, so I can't really blame them for the taunts.

He never spoke to me, I never spoke to him, but I've never forgotten him.

I certainly would have, jonmc... maybe we had the same seat in Mr. G's class (did you ever touch the dried chicken foot he kept dangling from the blackboard?).

My first crush was Danny M., when I was five. Apparently, I invited him up to see my teddy bear.

Then there was Frankie, the second of three brothers, who had blue eyes and a crew cut and lived near me in Marina Village, a project in Bridgeport, CT. He had one of those Fisher Price slide-show projectors and we used to play drive-in, draping a blanket between top and bottom bunks for extra privacy. My first kiss, I think. I was eight.

Frankie and I later got in a fight for some reason, and I marched outside and slapped him in the face. I was shocked when he slapped me back; it was the first (and last) time I ever hit someone. His mother used to make him and his brothers lay face-down on the living room rug for hours, days even, as punishment. To use the bathroom, they had to say, "Mother, May I."

He's not the one who got away really... I guess it's more an I-hope-he-got-away.

He was tall and handsome. I was young and restless. He got away before I knew how much I didn't want him to leave.

I don't have one who got away. I kept the only one worth keeping.

I will always believe a case of bad timing was the ruination of a short-lived relationship in my mid-20s, and that bugs me more than a little. However, I like to think that anyone who got away was meant to get away, and that there was a reason the timing was bad.

jrossi4r, that's so sweet.

I don't have one who got away. I kept the only one worth keeping.

I think I can say this about my own life, save and except the fact that I haven't met the one who's worth keeping yet.

My best friend in elementary school was the kindest, sweetest person I've ever known - it's very difficult, being friends with me, but we were always so loyal to each other. Anyway, she moved to Australia, and then I moved away, too. We wrote letters off and on through middle/high school, but I haven't heard from her since I went to college. Her name was Brittney and she, more than any crush, is the only person I regret losing.

The one that got away and I have been in elliptical orbits for awhile and I look forward to converging with her in Berlin soon. Keep an eye on the horizon for cosmic fireworks.

She's indescribable. How I feel about her is hard to put.

Oh, I'm so in love.

She ain't got away, not yet. (And no, I'm not talking about the one caged up in the basement)

I'll always remember her pink sock.