The Joys of High School

I've been thinking and thinking about this topic for a few days now and was worried that I wasn't going to be able to come up with an embarrassing moment. It's not that I haven't had my share of them, but over the years I seem to have forgotten them. With four kids there are always embarrassing moments happening, but as quickly as they happen they're usually lost in my cluttered head of recipes, errands, appointments and chores. But just when I thought I was going to have to tell you all that I can't remember an embarrassing moment, my pathetic memory recalled one. It happened the year I entered the 8th grade. I was very shy and a little awkward, and completely terrified by the grade nine and ten students that attended my junior high school. They seemed so old and mature to me. I can remember avoiding the hallways where their lockers were, fearful of being picked on or ridiculed at lunchtime.

It was 1988 and the movie "Young Guns" had just come out. My friends and I went to that movie about a dozen times, each of us in love with one of the young stars. My crush was on Emilio Estevez. I'm not sure why I loved him as much as I did, he certainly wasn't the typical Hollywood hunk, but I adored him. I would ask my mother, poor woman, to go to the store and buy me Tiger Beat Magazine so I could tear out the pictures of Emilio and tape them to my bedroom walls. I would day dream about him every chance I got and even pictured myself marrying him one day. Well one day I decided to express my love in a letter that I planned on mailing to him. How funny and naive I was back then. To think that I believed he would read my letter and drop everything just to rush to Canada and marry a 13-year-old girl. So silly. Anyway, I wrote my letter professing my devotion, signed it and then placed it inside an envelope that I covered with lipstick kisses.

Not wanting my mother, who frequently tidied my room, to come across my letter of love to Mr. Estevez, I tucked the letter inside my math binder. When Monday came around I had completely forgotten about the letter. It was just after lunch and I was heading to my math class with my binder held against my chest, when a big grade ten boy bumped into me. The force of the bump caused me to drop my binder. When the book hit the floor the metal rings opened and all the papers inside were scattered. Mortified at being on display, I got down on my knees and began to pick up the papers, my face red with embarrassment. Suddenly I noticed out of the corner of my eye that one of the most popular boys in the tenth grade was down on his knees helping me pick up my papers. I smiled at him and said "thank you," barely able to make eye contact. Though my heart belonged to Emilio, I secretly had a crush on this boy.

The bell had already rung and I was desperate to get out of the hallway, so when I thought all my papers had been picked up I quickly left. It wasn't until the middle of math class that my wonderful memory reminded me that my love letter had been in my spilled math binder. With my heart in my throat I flipped through the book, my stomach growing sicker as each page flashed by with no trace of my lipstick kissed envelope anywhere. I looked in my book bag...nothing. I excused myself so I could check the now emptied hallway...nothing. I looked in the garbage cans around the school..nothing. My letter and all its affections was gone. And the worst part was that it was probably being read (and laughed at) by one of the coolest boys in school. For the next month I made a point of avoiding him whenever I saw him. And to this day I have no idea where my letter went.

Have a great weekend.