When I was 16, a wild-haired friend of mine came into the bakery where I worked and handed me a piece of loose leaf paper, folded to an eighth its original size. As I opened it, he stood before me and waited and smirked. When I finally got it all the way open, what I found before me, written in pencil, was something to this effect (the ensuing years and thousands of love notes I’ve received since have blurred the exact wording for me, but I’m trying):
Alisa,
I like you. Would you like to go out with me?
Please check one:
Yes □ No □
From,
[Name goes here, but that’s my own little secret.]
As I said, I was 16. I had just lost a boatload of weight and was getting used to positive attention from boys. There was a boy who worked at the grocery store next to the bakery who had just asked me out to a rock concert and I found myself impressed (that is until I found myself wholly unimpressed after the date), but the boy who wrote the checkbox note – I had known him for a long time and never knew he had a crush on me. As evidenced by the fact that he wrote a note and had it delivered by a mutual friend instead of approaching me directly, he was shy and I think, a little inexperienced in these matters. Too big for my newly smaller britches, I declined to even check a box and return the note.
Yesterday, as Madeleine and I were walking after school, she told me that So-and-So told So-and-So that Madeleine liked him. As ten-year-olds are (and should be), she was mortified and embarrassed. I chuckled to myself. Oh, the pains we must endure before we grow into the vastness of love.
As an adult, I am immensely flattered by the attentions of that long-ago boy. He was sweet and a bit reserved around me, so when another boy came to me with tickets to The Cars, I was swept off my feet – that is, ‘til the last encore. The guy with the note never pursued me again and it was my loss.
Remembering this, I have vowed that if Maddie ever brings home a note with checkboxes (or more likely a text message), I will tell her to answer, to check a box, even if it’s not the box he was hoping for. If she doesn’t, she may never know what she missed.
Alisa,
I like you. Would you like to go out with me?
Please check one:
Yes □ No □
From,
[Name goes here, but that’s my own little secret.]
As I said, I was 16. I had just lost a boatload of weight and was getting used to positive attention from boys. There was a boy who worked at the grocery store next to the bakery who had just asked me out to a rock concert and I found myself impressed (that is until I found myself wholly unimpressed after the date), but the boy who wrote the checkbox note – I had known him for a long time and never knew he had a crush on me. As evidenced by the fact that he wrote a note and had it delivered by a mutual friend instead of approaching me directly, he was shy and I think, a little inexperienced in these matters. Too big for my newly smaller britches, I declined to even check a box and return the note.
Yesterday, as Madeleine and I were walking after school, she told me that So-and-So told So-and-So that Madeleine liked him. As ten-year-olds are (and should be), she was mortified and embarrassed. I chuckled to myself. Oh, the pains we must endure before we grow into the vastness of love.
As an adult, I am immensely flattered by the attentions of that long-ago boy. He was sweet and a bit reserved around me, so when another boy came to me with tickets to The Cars, I was swept off my feet – that is, ‘til the last encore. The guy with the note never pursued me again and it was my loss.
Remembering this, I have vowed that if Maddie ever brings home a note with checkboxes (or more likely a text message), I will tell her to answer, to check a box, even if it’s not the box he was hoping for. If she doesn’t, she may never know what she missed.
4 comments:
Did you make that up?
Nope. The experienced is firmly etched into my past so that proves it's not a figment of my imagination. But the "thousands of love notes" sure was!
I'm sure that the delivery boy had hair that wasn't that unruly. The important question is, did the delivery boy at least get a cookie out of the deal?
That delivery boy sure did have wild hair! But it was endearingly wild hair and I am sure he got at least one cookie out of the deal, if not a well-deserved potato knish!
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