On The Verge of Getting Weird

Grace crushes easily. On boys that is. I've already addressed her Boy Craziness here, but I feel the need to address the subject once again. I was hardly ever open about my crushes with my friends, much less my parents. In fact, it wasn't until I announced my engagement to be married that they officially knew that I even liked boys. I did like boys, however, and I do have some early memories. Apparently I had a little boyfriend named "Rocky" in Kindergarten but I remember nothing about him other than vague images of him always wanting to start a fight. Then in first or second grade, I remember one of my brother's friends (who's two years older) knocking on our door one afternoon. I remember saying, "Daniel's not here," and him replying, "I'm not here to see Daniel, I'm here to see you." That was enough to spark a crush. Other than that, my crushes were very private, especially from my parents.

In Junior High I'd play these little games with myself while I was practicing the piano. I'd do things like, if I play these two lines without messing up at all, it means he likes me. Or when we were driving around town if we'd be in his neighborhood, I always imagined that maybe, just maybe, he'd be outside just at the time we were driving by and maybe, just maybe, he'd see me. The potential kept the thrill alive.

In High School I had a lot of crushes that I kept pretty much to myself. There was this one new guy (who was also friends with my brother) that was the coolest thing to blow into town. He was in my English class and my friend R had a major crush on him. Little did she know, so did I. I never told anyone about that crush but I feel like I may have been busted when Daniel caught me writing this guy's name over and over and over and over on a sheet of notebook paper. The whole sheet of paper was filled up with his name. On the verge of getting weird. Grace is on the verge.

She is currently obsessed (and yes, it's a full-blown obsession) with a little boy at school, we'll call him "K" who is her teacher's son. K isn't in Grace's class, but they do see each other at recess and for special activities. It's K this, K that, tell a story about K, Mommy. Grace's two favorite things these days are 1.) playing around on the computer and 2.) hearing stories about K. When Grace acts up and does things like pulls Johnny's hair because there are no eggs left for baking pancakes (?), her consequences are 1.) no computer time and 2.) no stories about K.

She demands so many stories about K all day long that it's beginning to drive me nuts. Tell me a story about K Trick-or-Treating, Mommy; Tell a story about K going to the doctor; Tell a story about K going to school. Tell it, Mommy, tell it. When I suggest to Grace that she tell me a story about K, she says, "No, Mommy, you tell it." I am so tired of making up stories about K that I've gotten to the point that I actually look forward to her first infraction of the day so I can take that priveledge away from her. On weekend days, I've come to limit my stories about K to 6: 2 in the morning, 2 in the afternoon, and 2 in the evening. No more!

In addition to wanting to hear stories about K, Grace reports every little thing about him that she can remember during the day. His tummy hurt, he's fine now, he said "Bye bye" to me, he danced like this, his middle name is Scott, he said "Go" to me today. "He said 'go' to you today?" "Yes, Mommy, on the playground when it was my turn to go down the slide, he said, 'go.' He actually did." Yesterday he didn't actually say anything to her but she reported that he looked at her. (He really did). The other night Grace said she wanted to dream but she didn't know what to dream about. I told her that she could dream about K and she was like, "Really, Mommy? I can dream about K?" "Yes, Grace, and you never know, he may dream about you too."

Grace told her teacher that she had a crush on K. I'm not sure her teacher quite knows what to make of it but I've decided to lay off on my daily reports to her of what Grace says about K because we're currently towing the line between isn't that cute and on the verge of getting weird.