Here's to you, Mr. Corpuscle

The months between December and May have always been a very social time for me. Every weekend it seems someone else is having a birthday party, and unlike my birthday, which falls a bit too close to summer, people are usually in town to celebrate. Even here, now, where I know so many less people than ever, my calendar is booked through the first half of March. Lucky me.

Yesterday was the birthday of the very first boy I ever "liked". The only reason I still remember it 20 years later is that I spent from third to fifth grade writing his name in bubble letters in my diary and circling his birthday with a big pink heart. Every once in a while when I get nostalgic (or drunk) I'll pull out one of my many childhood diaries and remember what it what like to stress over love at age nine.

So in honor of First Crush's (FC's) 30th birthday, and the impending Valentine's Day, I thought I'd share with you my tale of a fourth grade agony.

FC was the first boy I ever really liked - at the ripe old age of eight. Sure, I had had the obligatory television crushes (Adam from Eight is Enough, circa 1980, age four), but this was the real thing. He sat near me in third grade, and I was sure that his brown puppy-dog eyes were staring at me with adoration and pre-pubescent lust.

At that age, most kids had probably never heard the word lust, let alone use it to describe any of their emotions; but I watched General Hospital and therefore knew a lot about such things. I just didn’t realize that they didn’t apply to eight year olds. To my credit, FC did pay more attention to me than he did the other girls, but because there is typically very little drama happening in grade school, I was forced to create some, if only in my mind. I spent countless nights dreaming of our future, where we would live in his house and act like the couples did in Port Charles.

Our relationship kicked into high gear in fourth grade with the school's annual nutrition play. Prior years had performed the masterpieces “Peter’s Pain,” and “The Gizard of Ox.” Ours was to be the suspiciously pornographic title “Alice in Bodyland,” in which Alice learns, after passing out and missing a test, that each of the four food groups are essential for good health and study habits.

FC, the most charismatic, best-looking, and only boy able to read the script without stopping to "sound out" the words was the obvious choice for the male lead, Mr. Corpuscle. (A corpuscle is a cell capable of free movement, whose job, in this case, was to take Alice on a tour through the digestive track of the human body).

As an aspiring actress, I thought I nailed the part of Alice. Not that I had any credits to my name – my experience consisted of playing all three Brady Bunch sisters, and sometimes Greg or Bobby, alone in my bedroom - but I thought that because I watched TV that meant I should be ON it. Well, the first rule in Hollywood is never assume. Because I was SO good (if good means overacting), I was instead given the supporting role of the White Rabbit. The goofy, loud, and clumsy White Rabbit. You could say I was typecast.

Another girl, we'll call her Role Stealer (RS) got the role of Alice, I imagine more for her long-haired resemblance to the character than for her monotonous monologues. Once I got over the fact that she would share top billing with my dreamboat, I was faced with an even bigger problem. The last scene in the play required Alice to thank Mr. Corpuscle with a peck on the cheek, and there was no way my nine-year-old angst-ridden brain and achy breaky heart could allow that to happen. For months I fell asleep at night agonizing over what I would do if RS kissed FC, and, GASP, if he liked it.

Fortunately for me, RS didn’t want to kiss FC anymore than I wanted her to. She managed to put it off (stupid, stupid girl) until nearly the dress rehearsal, at which point she finally broke down and our teacher allowed her to substitute the kiss with a less-gratuitous pat on the back. Her relief mirrored mine, months of fourth grade anguish vanishing in an afternoon like Alice down the rabbit hole. (Or, in our case, the esophagus.)

I may have gotten lucky in Bodyland, but my imaginary relationship with FC went downhill from there. We had separate fifth grade classrooms, all the way across the hall. And while I had started liking boys well before my friends, the other girls were now fully aware that FC was one of the better looking boys in the fifth grade and probably planned spin-the-bottle games while I sat at home watching my soap. I didn’t stand a chance.

Most people, with the possible exception of the Olsen twins, go through an awkward stage at some point in their adolescence. In fifth grade, I owned “awkward”. Who can blame Mr. Corpuscle for wanting to exercise his god-given right to move freely about?