Young Woman’s Fancy

“In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson

(For the record: It’s the same for young women.)

: )

So, how many times have you been in love? Truly in love?

Do you count the times you thought you were in love — only to realize, a few months or weeks or even days (hell, maybe even hours) later that you were, in fact, merely infatuated or in lust or majorly crunching on someone? Are those who have been in love only once in their lives the only ones who have truly experienced being in love? (Is their love more powerful, fiercer somehow, because it has been devoted solely to one person?)

Is it possible to be in love with someone if she or he is not in love with you? Or can being “in love” truly occur only when two people are in love with each other?

Hey, don’t look at me for the answers! I’m just throwing some questions out there; I really don’t have a clue how to respond to some of them!

: o

When I was in eighth grade, I was in love with Ronnie Hagan. (Yes, a boy. I was most definitely a very straight girl when I was in junior high ... well, except for that crush on my math teacher ... a female ... also when I was in eighth grade, now that I think about it! OK, mostly straight.)

I don’t even remember how Ronnie and I got together. He was a year younger than I; in fact, I had met him when he was in fifth grade and I was in sixth because he was going with my sister — and, to be quite honest, I wasn’t all that crazy about him when they were together ’cause I thought he was kinda dorky and ... well, he liked my sister! I never liked the same boys who liked my sister!

They went together for the better part of their fifth-grade year, and then they broke up, and I don’t remember having any awareness of him whatsoever until I was in eighth grade and suddenly we were going together.

And:

Oh. My. God.

How I loved that boy. How in love I was with that boy — more than Tony or Brad or Rickey or Tim or Kenny or even Luther ... and how in love Ronnie was with me. How in love we both were, for a few wonderful months during the 1978-79 school year. Damn.

Pardon me while I enjoy being completely lost in a junior high moment, won’t you?

: )

Let me just say that I see him in all kinds of people — most recently, Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli) of The Sopranos. And it never fails to make me smile ... especially when Christaphah is at his most, uhm, brilliant.