Why I can't hit on guys: a memory.

True story:

So let's say I'm in junior high, and it's the first day of school. Let's pretend that I am biologically crazy. Hormones are so abundant you can actually see them crawling all over students. People start dating and kissing and participating in things I wouldn't even dream about trying until I was at least fifteen.

Three elementary schools have merged into Lincoln Junior High, and there are new faces everywhere. One new face is in my English class. I immediately know that he is going to be my newest crush, because he's all brown and golden with very big, clean teeth. In the past I just would meander around the Boy of My Dreams until we became friends. Which was stupid, because they all liked me, but they never liked me liked me, and in the end I was left heartbroken, never to love again.

So the Golden Boy is in my class, and I sit next to him, loving him with all my heart, more than any boy I loved previously, shamelessly soaking in his glow, because he is glowing. Glowing with my love for him.

My past loves are nothing in retrospect, all the feelings I had ever had towards any boy could not be added or multiplied or made big enough in any way to even compare to the universe-sized adulation I have towards Him. Obviously, my eleventh year of existence was going to be the first year of the rest of my life...the rest of my life with the Golden Boy.

Six and a half minutes into our relationship and we have not yet spoken, but I sit next to him as Mr. Nelson is going over the syllabus and I know we're in love, and I can feel that he knows too, because he keeps making sideways glances in my direction. I deduce that he's finally met his Eternal Soulmate, as have I. The fact that his last name comes directly before mine in the alphabet and that Mr. Nelson has the clairvoyance to seat us adjacent to one another can only be explained with one magical word: destiny.

Mr. Nelson must know that he is making romantic history. He will give a speech at our wedding, because he will be invited, given the fact that he designed such a perfect, love-cultivating seating chart for his third period English class.

I sniff because I have a cold, in real eleven-year-old life, and my fantasy continues.

We are meant to be Boyfriendgirlfriend. We will have that Title. People will ask me in the sixth grade hallway, "Are you guys, like, Boyfriendgirlfriend?" and I will answer, with gusto, "Of course we are Boyfriendgirlfriend." I'll secretly think to myself, "and we always will be."

Here is how it will happen, I imagine. He is going to turn and face me, and I am going to smile shyly. Then he'll ask to see my pen, because he will notice that I have a pen that is seven colors in one depending on which tab you press down at the top, and he'll tell me it's really cool, because most people need seven different pens if they want blue, black, red, green, orange, purple, and yellow, and yellow pens are very hard to find.

Then he'll ask me if I ever use the yellow pen for homework, and I will explain that I don't because teachers don't like yellow pen in junior high, but sometimes I use it to take notes.

Then I'll hand him the pen, and our outstretched fingertips will touch lightly, and at the exact moment of contact time will stop. We won't be able to break the touch, and a pale luminescence will form around our connected fingers like in ET except more romantically, and that luminescence will eventually spread to encircle our entire bodies. We'll stare into each others eyes, and then he'll know and I'll know that we both know that the other knows and everyone'll know that our love for one another is Infinite and True even though we are only in sixth grade and then I sneeze very loudly mid-vision.

Golden Boy turns towards me and says with no regard for decent volume, "Uggh, that was disgusting. And stop looking at me, it's weird." Quiet giggles are heard around the room.

Nearly every encounter I've had with a boy has mirrored that exact moment of my life.

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