Day 24 of 100

“He isn’t that cool anyway,”

I heard her friends say as they walked away.

I stood there in my blue shorts and white t-shirt, sweating from playing some game that involved chasing and running and sliding watching them disappear around the corner absolutely befuddled.

I was in the sixth grade at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View, CA. A school so bad it misspelled its own name on the yearbook. I was a decent student, mostly in honors classes, and generally well liked. I clearly had friends because even as good as I was playing on my own, there is no way I was running around the school acting crazy if there wasn’t at least one other person doing the same.

California schools were mostly outside schools with plenty of hills and grass to run around, and on this particular day, I came tearing around a corner, slid into a small grass hill and popped up quickly only to be confronted by a girl that I had never seen.

“Hi,” she mumbled. I was unsure what to say. “Hi” seemed like a good choice.

“Do you want to go to the Sadie Hawkins dance with me?” She asked as she watched her shoe make little circles in the ground over and over.

“Well,” I thought. “This is new.” I thought about what my friends would say, and I do remember reminding myself that I wasn’t supposed to like girls. “Girls are yucky,” I told myself, “right?” But I liked that she asked me. And she seemed nice. A warmth existed in my chest that I had never felt before.

The feeling was quickly consumed by fear. A fear that I have felt time and time again over the years. What was I supposed to do? What would my parents think? How….what….why…the embarrassment?!? I was so confused.

So I stood tall and stuck out my chest.

“No way!” I stated, “yuck!” And ran away.

I do think about that day every now and again and wonder what that girl is up to. What would have happened if I said yes. How life might have been if in that moment I had the courage to say “sure. I’ll go to the dance with you.”