Flashback Friday #138

Poultry In Motion

Hello again. Hop in the way back machine with me and we'll head back to early in my ninth grade year in High School (that would be 1978).

There was a girl that I had liked in Jr. High, but I was the biggest chicken in the world.

Socially awkward would be an understatement. To compound matters, I had called her cousin "fat & ugly" in Elementary School. Since I was too chicken to say anything to her, I became her "Secret Admirer". Today some would call it stalking, but since this was 1978, and I was all of 14, it was acceptable.

Because I was too shy, awkward, self-conscious (you can stop me any time) to talk to her, I wrote poetry and slipped it into her books while she wasn't paying attention. She sat in front of me in most of the classes, due to the fact that our last names began with the same letter, and most teachers sat us alphabetically until they could put a face with a name.

Drop a pencil, slip a poem into the books on the rack under the desk. Walk to my desk, slip a poem in while she is talking to friends before the bell rings. I kept this up for about two weeks.

Then disaster struck. While slipping a poem in her book, one of her friends caught me. This friend knew no secrets. The jig was up.

She never said anything to me, and I didn't go to her to tell her why I was doing it. I assumed that since she said nothing, she didn't like me, or still held a grudge about her cousin. What I didn't know was that she was waiting for me to make the first move, since she also was shy.

I found out a couple years later (after we had become very good friends) that she was infatuated with the poems. She said that one more would have been all that it would taken to completely woo her. Oh well, I was beginning to run out of ideas to write about anyway.

Did you have a secret admirer? Were you ever one yourself?