We all remember our first major crush right?
Mine was Warren Barber (let me reminisce a moment…)
I remember the exact moment I knew he was THE ONE. I was 8 years old, hanging off the monkey bars with my friends in my primary school playground. A timid, but extremely cute little boy walks over and hands me a Christmas card.
Dear Rachael
Merry Crismas
Love from Warren
I was so embarrassed that I screwed it up in his face and threw it on the ground. That quickly became one of the most regrettable moments of my then short life. His little face was as crushed that card. Embarrassed, he turned around and walked away. From that moment until, oh…. almost the end of high school, I was completely head over heels in unrequited love. He would never be my boyfriend. Our completely one-sided “relationship” came to a not-so-exhilarating crescendo at a house party, many years later.
Now, we need to take into account how old I currently am (double-21…. fuck, when did that happen?). This was the very early 90s… all before there was such a thing as social media and mobile phones. Being at the same party as your crush, and at the same time, was more by divine intervention than strategy. Finding out that The Warren Barber was at the party we had just arrived at was a sign from the universe… surely!
So there I am, scanning the room. My Levi 501s were pulled up as high as they would go… belt pulled in as tight as I could get it… checked flannelette shirt poofed out just right… the almost entire can of max-hold hairspray I’d dumped on my fringe for adequate height and volume had been worth it.
I couldn’t see him… Then I could. My eyes locked with the greasiest, most acne-covered, scrawniest, limp-long-haired male I had ever come across. Surely this wasn’t MY Warren Barber? He made his way across the crowded room, everything I had pictured in my head over the last 8 years, yet NOT A THING LIKE IT! Oh, fuck, he’s coming to talk to me. Think fast.
Awkward conversation ensues… Left school?… Courier driver?.. aha?… um, no, I don’t smoke… cigarettes or pot… but thanks anyway… um, yeah I have a boyfriend, sorry (lies… I had been saving myself for pretty much the whole of high school for this… disappointment).
Suffice to say… I do not have an “I married my childhood sweetheart” story…
Anyway… enough about me… this is about my big girl… She is 8 and she has her first crush.
My physiotherapy clinic is across the road from the girls’ school. I am fortunate enough that I am usually finishing up with my last client about the same time they finish school. Normally the girls are STARVING when they walk in, and they don’t waste any time telling me this as they come through the door (well, if you’d just eat the healthy food I put in your lunch box everyday so I look like a good mum to any teacher that may happen to look inside it then YOU WOULDN’T BE FUCKING HUNGRY… oops, that’s another story…).
One afternoon last week, instead of the usual whiny “I’m hungry” crap Kira gives me, she comes in and starts BRUSHING HER HAIR… I am instantly suspicious. No sooner is my last patient out the door and Kira is beckoning me into the kitchen.
“Flynn Rider likes me…” (names changed to protect the innocent… Warren’s name is legit… coz that’s what you get for blatantly rejecting me at 10 years old when my best friend Anna asked you if you wanted to “go round” with me… an elephant never forgets, nor forgives).
“Did he tell you that?”
“No, Pocahontas did.”
“I thought Pocahontas liked Flynn Rider… she even had a running race with Tinker Bell to see who would be his Valentine?”
“No, she doesn’t like him anymore.”
“Well, do you like him?”
“Ummm… Yes…”
Nawwww… Bless… But something is bugging me… I was fairly sure Flynn Rider already had a little girlfriend. Holy shit… how am I suddenly at this point in my parenting career?? Time for the “Sisters Before Misters” talk…
“What does that mean?”
“So honey, if your friend Tinker Bell is going out with Flynn Rider, and you decide you also like Flynn Rider, AND he asks you to be his girlfriend at the same time… that’s called two-timing (is it still called that these days?) and its totally not cool. He’s not a nice boy doing that, and you’re not a nice friend.”
“It’s OK Mummy, Tinker Bell doesn’t care.”
“Oh, are you sure?”
“Yeah, she’s with Buzz Lightyear now.”
Um… OK… I clearly need to extend my little lecture on moral standards…
“Oh, honey, don’t be that girl either.”
“What girl?”
“The girl that suddenly finds herself with two boyfriends at the same time! Nobody likes her!”
Seriously? Seriously! Am I seriously having this conversation with my 8 year old?
Firstly, there are the clear societal double standards I’m laying out before her! That it’s “not nice” if a boy has two or three girlfriends at the same time… but a girl having more than one boyfriend or dating her friend’s boyfriend… unforgivable social suicide. She lives in a world where “slut-shaming” is out of control. While I feel like EVERYTHING has changed since I was her age, in so many ways NOTHING has changed. Oh I could go on and on about how I think feminism has failed us and our daughters, but that isn’t the thing that is sitting wrong in the pit of my stomach.
I suddenly realise, my immediate fear is much more simple and much less political. I am simply worried that my baby may like a boy who doesn’t like her back. It takes me back to when I liked a boy called Warren, who never liked me back. When you are 8, and you unknowingly have an easy life, there is not much worse than unrequited love.
Once again… just when I thought I had everything under control, my whole world shifted. My big girl is growing up. She is no longer my baby. Our conversation has changed. And once again, I’m not ready…
Oh shit…
Feralville 