Crushless

Liz is surprised to reveal:

I am currently crush-free. This may be the first time since college I can remember not having some secret crush lurking out there. No one. Have my standards risen or have I simply given up?

When I was in college I had a night class. I've never been any good before 10 AM. The professor was quite the cutie. I would fix my hair before going to his classes. I would wear my best outfits. I would sit attentively and ask pertinent questions. I did everything shy of writing, "I Love You" on my eyelids to get him to glance at me one second too long.

I was doing some student work in his office building. I worked part-time in the Center of the Gifted. I was not gifted, I was one of the lackeys who supported the gifted. At the copier, I was daydreaming about his wife being killed by a herd of rabid goats. The copy machine was making that "swish, swish" hum and my thoughts were on him and me and how happily we could live together. I would be an excellent mother to his two young sons. I would be a stay at home mom and we would have 2 children of our own. At first his children would call me "Liz", but within a year they would have totally forgotten that they ever had a biological mother and I would take the name of "Mom". The 6 of us would be blissfully happy.

I heard a voice behind me. I was startled. My daydreams and the noise of the copier had me far away from campus. It was him. I whisked around and saw my crush before me with a handful of papers. My back was against the copier. It was vibrating slightly.

"Do you mind if I slide this in?" he asked, professionally. Without blinking, without thinking, I breathlessly answered, "God, I wish you would,"

Then I turned away, my mouth agape, my eyes rolling, my cheeks flushed, I removed my copies from the machine and allowed him to slide his stuff in.

I love moments like that. Moments where life catches you off guard. That's the fun of having a crush, especially when, unlike that example, the crush is open and reciprocated.


I have no crushes right now, hidden or open. There is no one at work, no one at the liquor store, no one working construction on the side of the road that I look forward to running into or almost running over and then saving with my CPR training. No celebrity yearnings where I dream of being whisked away to his villa in Italy and living off of his money and thriving on his incredible looks. Not even impure thoughts about Luke Wilson, who is totally crushable. I know it sounds very thirteen of me to complain about this, but so goes life.


Fellas, you'd better step it up. Get into my fantasies quick before I turn into a middle aged woman who only fantasizes about home improvement projects.