Close to You - The Carpenters
12 years old is a ripe age for blossoming feelings.
Its in the middle of a series of turbulent growth and development from childhood to adolescence.
Its where we experience things both confusing and invigorating.
Nothing builds color to memories and adult life than the experiences of pre-adolescence.
When I was 12 years old, I learned how to swoon from afar.
It was maybe this highschool boy's athletic prowess in basketball, whose court doubled as the school's gathering area for programs and flag ceremonies placed right in the middle of the larger portion of the classrooms.
Or maybe it was his name, which sounded romantic to me then.
Or his playful face, tall physique and easy smile, whose charms didn't also escape the other females of our little town school's population.
Or the sweet way he takes care of his younger brother, who was a preschool version of him.
But it probably did start to deepen into something more than admiration when I felt an almost possible connection between us at drum and lyre corps.
Because it was then that I discovered I can be the best at something after a series of years being only semi-best at something.
The 12 year old me started to bear insecurities as early as that age. And its painful to realize.
I was the fastest and most talented lyrist of the corps at that time. And he was the only snare drummer.
As innocent as contests then were, and as non-competitive sister school performance have been, we were the trusted duo of the corps - always present in practice, our presence relied on to begin and end performances, and the trusted children to lead.
This fact made me proud, in my little girl's mind.
But even then, even with that little sprout of confidence I had, I was always the shy child who never even had the nerve to strike a conversation with anybody.
Call it the restraint of all the pent-up insecurities in me since the time memorial - being a plain looking child, the fat girl who always run the slowest in tag, the girl who can never dance or sing as well as her sister.
It was a day before Christmas break that I realized I will feel my first serious crush on this oblivious boy.
I was riding a packed car from a corps performance held in a sister school a few town's over when we got held up on traffic.
It was a humid December afternoon, my mom and my aunt's conversation drolling in the background about how pretty my cousin is in her marionette clothes, and my incessant mind being sad again for not being as pretty as her and never becoming liked back by that boy with a face like me, when the pick-up truck he was riding on stopped beside ours.
My heart skipped a beat when our eyes met.
His younger brother, who had become a little non-official mascot for the corps saw us and waved.
He was waving too.
And he smiled, his eyes still on me.
I couldn't help but wave back.
Then the traffic light turned green and we were off.
All of us were still waving for each other beyond the cars.
It was the connection I waited, I guess.
Because after that, I can meet him eye to eye.
Even cheer each other out in practices.
And sometimes meeting eyes in performances.
That was when my little girl's brain started dedicating The Carpenter's song to him.
It was the best last six months of my Elementary years.
And I was sad when my parents decided to enroll me on another High School where they were alumni at.
Because he remained a high schooler there. Just a street opposite my new school.
Maybe it was for the best.
This ending.
