My funny Valentine

When I was 17 and a senior in high school, I had the biggest crush on.... hahahaha. I'm not going to tell you his name because if someone googles him, it will come up to this page. So, we'll call him "X". X was a year or two younger than I, and his locker was just down from the locker I shared with Les for those last three years of school. He was gorgeous. And I'm not kidding you, like, GQ gorgeous. He was tall, athletic, blue-eyed and a sweetie, as well. I always kind of blew it off as a crush on a "kid" because he was, well, younger than I. But, and this was not my imagination, the boy would always smile and strike up conversations with me every time we both were going to and fro those lockers.

On Valentine's Day, we were getting ready to leave for lunch when he smiled and started chatting. As I said good-bye and headed toward the cafeteria he yelled down the hall, "Ally, will you be my valentine?"... I think I just smiled and blushed, as any 17 year old girl might do, and yelled back "How about a rain-check?", to which he smiled and nodded.

A week or two later, we were walking down the stairs in B wing together, and I asked him when I could get that rain-check. C'mon, this guy was smokin' hot! I wasn't about to let this one get away! He said he wasn't sure... I pushed him and he got pissed. Needless to say, we never got that rain-check. We still flirted and chatted throughout the rest of the year, but nothing ever happened between X and I, to my sad chagrin.

Ah, but I knew it would never work. This guy was a bit out of my league. He came from a very well-to-do family, generations upon generations educated at Yale. I never thought to myself that he was "better" than me. Just... different. I came from a very middle-class place in life. I probably would never had understood his world. And I was okay with that.

When I was in college, I heard that he had gone off to Yale (of course) and did a search on the directory. We communicated by e-mail for a while, then we lost touch. Now that I'm back home, I do often think about what happened to many of the people I went to school with, especially X. He was such a sweetheart, and, of course, a prime Hottie. I googled him this morning and found out that, yes, he is in residency in Chicago. But what else did I expect? Every male in X's family became a doctor. It's just weird for me to think of that sweet little 16 year old as a doctor. I bet he puts all his patients in a flutter, no doubt. But I'm glad to see he is doing well, my funny valentine.