When I was in eighth grade, we were assigned to design a house—on paper, of course. So, I created a huge house using a gargantuan sheet of graph paper. Well, eight pages applied to one of those tri-fold display panels, but I also included the write up on how the two-point five story house—including a pool on the second story was to be constructed. The problem was I left off important information: such as HOW the pool was supported from above and added a lot of extra information about who I was married to in this fictions house.
I assumed hiding her name behind a pseudonym would have prevented any pointing or jokes from the class. My description of her on the first two pages of the essay was written to describe an older woman, a mother of three—and yes, each child had first, middle and last names. I left her hair color as it was in real life and since only one person had piercing auburn hair, well, everyone assumed I was talking about her, and they were right. Fortunately, I decided to edit out anything about the wedding and honeymoon.
It didn’t take her too long to find about it and I felt like complete and utter embarrassment in her eyes. It took me over two weeks to even attempt to look in her general direction, afraid that even a passing gaze of her would cause me skin to spontaneously combust. She never said anything to me about it. In fact, after the assignments were retuned to us, the rest of the class forgot about it. Heck, I forgot about it as I thought she was above me and it was pointless to think that anything could come of it. I mean, we were in eighth grade, what could ever happen between us?
“Why do we have dances in the eighth grade?”
“It gets us out of class.”
“If I had the option, but we’re forced to stand a darkened room on opposite sides of the room.”
“Well, I plan to go and make my way across the floor and ask Danielle to dance with me.”
“Dance,” I said with disdain. “Everyone just holds onto each other step in a clockwise direction. It’s not even dancing.”
“Your can call it what you want to, but for me, it’s allowing myself to be up against a cute girl.”
He had the better point. Yes, everyone looked like a pair of gingerbread men slowly spinning around, but he was right, he would be invited into Danielle’s personal space.
Lucas Wildman’s desire, for as long as I knew him, was to get Patricia Danielle Gebhardts to notice him. We had gone back and forth in the past on how to get our respective crushes to notice us but while I had given up on my dream, Lucas was still adamant to get her attention:
He had her “arrested” ten times at the school fair. You would pay two dollars to have an “officer” search the crowd and bring the “prisoner” to a box marked “jail”. After the twentieth time, she refused to go and wanted to know who the heck paid the forty dollars.
He sent her a bouquet of flowers that she ended of being allergic to and broke out in hives. Her parents were notified and were not happy the school could not tell them who delivered the flowers.
We looked up her home phone number and he tried to call her and when she answered, he pretended to be someone named Adam and asked her how the weather was.
“This time it will just be me. No gimmicks, nothing elaborate. I’ll just go up to her and ask her.”
“What will you do if some other guy goes to her first?”
“That’s where you come in.”
“Excuse me?”
“I assume you’re not going to be dancing.”
“I just said I don’t even want to go.”
“I need you to be my wingman, Seth.”
“What, am I supposed to trip him up or push him and while he’s wondering who shoved him, you swoop in and get with Danielle?”
“I like your idea better. Mine was you’ll tackle him in the dark and while you’re getting detention along with the guy, I’ll walk up to Danielle.”
I rolled my eyes as I would never do that to anyone, even if I absolutely hated them. However, there was an exception to that rule and the more Lucas talked about his plan, it got me thinking about who else would be at that dance and would I try and knock out anyone who tried to walk up to my auburn-tressed princess.
“So, will you tackle him?”
“You just need to go up at the very first song and ask her.”
“Yes, the direst approach. I like it.”
A loud whistle sounded, ending the noon time break. One could call it “recess” as we were out with the sixth and seventh graders, but there was little to do unless one liked to play soccer or “it’s supposed to touch” football, which neither of us enjoyed so we spent most of our days going back and forth about Nintendo games, movies, and girls.