The High School Crush (satire)

She wasn't my girlfriend. In fact, she turned me down completely. Yet I had this crush on her that began in Grade 11 and ended after graduating high school.

It has been almost 40 years since then. Since then I have not felt the same feelings felt when a cute, curly haired young woman led me to have a crush on her almost four decades ago.

Rachel Edwards (not her name) was a cheerful, bubbly 16 year old, who ended up going to Aldergrove High School in 1975 due to a slight change in catchments. The following year, the boundaries changed once again, and we ended up graduating at different schools, with me at Aldergrove and her, Langley Secondary School.

An expert at playing the flute, Rachel was talented. She also was anti-capital punishment. At one point in her artistic career, she painted a mural on the side of the Aldergrove Park swimming pool building.

If I were to name the only thing positive that came out of this one-sided relationship, then it would be that I learned that my view on love is often limited and not as rich as anyone else's. Perhaps this is due to an early mild traumatic brain injury at age 2.

It is difficult to tell what has caused me to be so unlucky at love. Most likely, I fear commitment, so much of my later sex life consisted of short liaisons with willing women and a lot of premarital sex.

Even the apparently committed relationships were relatively short-lived trysts, some of them romantic but most of them lasting less than a year.

Today I am coming on to my 56th year, and wonder what happened to Rachel. Did she get married? Or, was her sex life as short-lived as mine? Perhaps her life was richer than mine in experience but the job was tiresome, being nursing.

I will never know, because Rachel's number remains unlisted. I am sure that I never loved her, and that much of that relationship was as close to becoming like a obsessive romantic as anyone might get.

Though, my recent change in religious denomination is a stark contrast to my life before Mormon, from late teens as hopeless romantic to confirmed bachelor.

Even so, I am grateful to you, Rachel Edwards, because you agreed to exchange letters with me. I am sorry for sending your letters back without stamps. Thanks for putting up with me.

By the way, I truly miss you.