I had terminal, obsessive crushes. The kind that would last all school year and occasionally flow into the next. The kind that make you sit up at night and stare out windows and walk around in Hallmark stores. The kind that make you misty watching romantic movies, wishing that it was you and Beth or Tina or Julie and not that good-looking movie-star couple who were walking down the beach at sunset, totally and passionately in love. I have a feeling I spent more class periods staring longingly at girls who didn’t know I existed and wishing they were mine than any other kid in the history of the educational system.Or at least it felt that way to me.One of my biggest crushes was on a girl named Yvonne. We were in the eighth grade together, and she sat across from me in homeroom. Our class was laid out with two groups of thirty desks facing each other on opposite sides of the large room, creating an open area in the middle where our teacher lectured from—sort of an educational theater-in-the-round.
