First Crush

Do you remember your first crush? I was just thinking about mine. Her name was Darla Hughes. She was tall and thin, and had blonde hair. That makes her sound like some sort of blonde bombshell, but she wasn't. She dressed plainly, sort of in a Talbots/LL Bean/Lands End kind of way. I remember her hair as really straight and dry, sort of straw-like, as if it had been dyed one too many times. She was the music teacher at my elementary school when I was in fifth grade.

She played the tuba. She taught me how to play the flute. She had really smiley eyes, and was nice to me, even though I think I probably pretty much sucked. (The flute was really not my instrument.) But my heart got broken at the end of the year when the school board laid her off in a last-hired-first-fired frenzy.

My other first crush was the boy who lived across the street, Marc Falkin. I think he's a lawyer now. He was very cute and 1 year older than me, which was a big deal when you're 6. He had a little white electric convertible car and would take me for rides around the block. I was his eye candy. But one day he said something that made me mad, and I bit him. I'm not sure, but I think I bit him on the neck, vampire-style. Though we remained friends (he had my favorite toy, Lite-Brite), things were never the same after that.