happy valentines day to you

Funnily enough on this day of expressing your love for the loved ones in your life shane talked in his sleep last night about some other woman and i dreamt of my first love.

My mom always likes to tease me that i was a homely kid and honestly, i really was. I had thick curly frizzy unruly hair that overshadowed any beauty that may have been hiding under all of it.

When i was in grade 8 and starting high school i fell into the most intense and long lasting crush. His name was mark and he was a very cool, dark and brooding grade 9 boy. I remember memorizing his class schedule just so i could watch him walk down the hallway. His swagger sent me swooning. My crush lasted at least three years.

When i was in grade 10 someone let him know (it would have been impossible for him to not have known as i had obsessively followed him for three years) how i felt and at the valentine's dance he swaggered over to me for the last slow dance and said "I hear you want to dance with me."

And so we danced to madonna "crazy for you." I'll never forget that feeling of slow dancing with him. He never talked to me again after that.

Then one night many years later i was at a late night pizza place in vancouver after a night of dancing. I had recently broken up with a long term live in boyfriend and had begun dating shane. I wasn't with shane i was out with another mark; a friend visiting from london. I was 20 years young. And i had left that homeliness long behind.

Sitting alone at a booth beside us was the mark of my highschool crush. We started chatting and laughing. He poured hot peppers on my pizza and dared me to eat it. I did. I think at some point i introduced the two marks. My highschool crush mark asked how i knew his name.

"You KNOW me! I'm jess from highschool."

"No way!"

He took off the hat i was wearing. I knew at that moment that i had finally won the boy of my adolescent dreams. We never saw each other again.

Happy Valentine's Day to all my internet crushes!
xxoo