Unconventional First Crush: Battling Bullies and Emotions | Daily Prompt

My first crush was unconventional. It started in a new elementary school. First grade was just around the corner, and it was my first time attending a daycare where my mother worked. Because of this, some children picked on my little sister and me.

One of our bullies was a boy I nicknamed J.C. A scant few guys didn’t avoid him and joined in poking fun at us. I would typically avoid contact with him as he had a hot-headed reputation among aftercare workers and students until I caught him taunting my sister for being weaker than him. When I stepped in to defend her, he turned his jeering toward me, insisting that all girls were fragile, frail creations.

I didn’t take the ridicule very well.

I tackled him. He took off running. For several minutes, his cronies watched as I chased him around the gymnasium, and my sister cheered. Finally, I wrestled him into a bench position and motioned my younger sister over. She bounced on J.C.’s back, giggling with glee at every hop.

Looking back, I am aware I could’ve handled this better. But, as I looked down at J.C., arms crossed, lips curling into a deviant smile, something flitted through my mind, “He’s kind of cute.”

For four years, I repeatedly chucked that thought back into the recesses of my mind. Even when I caught my sister kissing him at a second-grade school sleepover, I tried not to think too deeply about the burning feeling in my chest.

It wasn’t until I entered the fourth-grade choir that something changed. J.C. and I were in the same group, and until then, he avoided me. Out of caution or self-pride, I still question, but at the end of one afternoon practice, he approached, a piece of notebook paper in hand. J.C. pushed the paper into my hands, and even now, I can recall his grumpy, gruff expression as he grunted two little words, “For you.”

Slowly, I turned the paper to find a Blue-Eyes White Dragon picture scribbled in pencil on the back. At ten years of age, I was touched. No guy had ever given me a gift before.

Surging heat clawed its way up my neck and filled my cheeks. Fumbling over my words, I thanked him for the gift and took off without looking back. As the days passed, I stopped thinking of him as J.C. and started calling him Josh. Nerves got the better of me every time I met until he moved towns. By then, I began to realize he was my first crush.

Through a mutual friend, I later learned he had been failing my mother’s class and hoped to earn a good grade by befriending me. Something in me shattered my fourth-grade year. Despite longing for romance, I kept men at a four-foot pole distance. Looking at how silly I acted over my former bully, I learned having a crush is like walking with blinders.