My Early Experiences in School Crushes

At Roland Park Elementary Middle, North Baltimore, Maryland

By E.W. Samson

It was 2006. My favorite movies were “The Lord of the Rings.” I had the Gameboy Advanced SP. That was the last Gameboy, the one that flips open. By seventh grade I'd had a few small crushes, but nothing that panned out. And then I met Sally. Sally had curly blond hair and she lived in my neighborhood. Sally and I were in different classes, but at the end of the year there was standardized testing, and they put us together in the same room. 

When you’re with someone who makes you nervous all over, in my experience, either you try to squirm away, or you and the other person scoot closer together. You hear bells in your ears, it feels like you just drank hot chocolate, and you see a light, like firelight, shining out from some nonexistent hearth onto your faces, hands, and bodies. When you touch, all the nervousness comes together into that point of contact. It just so happened that Sally and I, on that lazy day, were close enough that our elbows were touching, and I remember wondering later whether an electric current had been flowing between us during that brief contact. 

The next year, we were in the same class. We sat together at lunch, held hands, and walked together through our neighborhood in the fogs of autumn and the snows of winter. In the spring, after 3 months, the feeling broke like a fragile object turned too often in the hand.

So I went back to playing “The Lord of the Rings” on the Gameboy Advanced SP. I beat the Gandalf storyline dozens of times. I had a lot of skill points on the main magical talents. These included producing a blue sphere of protective energy, firing a directional beam attack, slamming of the staff on the ground to produce a shockwave, and, of course, summoning the eagles, which came and briefly aided in the fight. I had found many rare items throughout the game that restored Gandalf’s health and regenerated manna at a rate that made normal gameplay obsolete. 

Instead of fighting the enemies, who I inevitably killed in one hit, I made up another game. There are blackbirds positioned throughout the game. If you get too close, they fly away off the screen. If you don’t stop them, Sauron sends a couple of Ringwraiths to strike you dead on the spot. That is what usually happens because, during normal gameplay, Ringwraiths are so overpowered they are impossible for a low-level player to face. My game was to get to the last level, which has a ton of these blackbirds in it, then run around, chased by an ever-increasing horde of Ringwraiths, spooking the birds and letting them fly away. When there were no more birds, I would turn around and fight the hundred or so Ringwraiths in a big black mass. This was the only way to get a good battle. 

Sally and I went to different high schools, and after a while, it got boring to keep running through all the levels just for that big rout at the end. Not long after, I stopped playing Gameboy altogether. I re-watched “The Lord of the Rings” recently and they hold up with time. And I checked Sally’s LinkedIn a while back and she’s doing fine.