First Crushes

We've all had crushes in our lives. Every one of us.

My first crush was on a boy that lived down the street from me. There was only one other girl on my street and her mother kept her inside doing housework all day, so I seldom got to play with her. There were some older girls--but they were too old to want to play with a little pest like me. Whatever the reason, there just weren't any girls around for me to play with. I know some women will say, "Well, I just got out and played with the boys." That's all well and good for them, but the boys on my street didn't want me playing with them. A few of them ignored me completely, but most were downright mean to me.

All except Glen.

Glen was the only one who was nice to me. That's just the kind of boy he was. He was polite and kind, and a good kid. As a result, I gravitated toward him. I followed him everywhere. When the boys would play baseball, I would cheer for Glen. When they played football, I cheered for Glen.

When the boys went fishing in the gully across from my house, they usually went down to Pop-eye's Store and bought a box of bait shrimp. I would dig through the box, picking out the biggest and best shrimp for Glen to fish with. To this day, I have a soft spot in my heart for dead shrimp. Come to think of it, that may be where my affinity for brown eyes comes from.

Glen had brown eyes.

My first celebrity crush came when I was about 13, though I didn't dare admit it to anyone. Not in the South in the seventies. But times have changed enough that for the first time, I feel like I can admit this.

My first celebrity crush was not Shaun Cassidy, or Parker Stevenson, or Scott Baio, or any of the young men all the girls were going silly over. I never saw the point in that. Screaming and jumping just because someone was on TV. I thought that mess was all nonsense. Still do.

So, no. I tended not to have crushes on actors or musicians. Other girls did that. Not me. My first celebrity crush was on--are you ready for this?

Tony Dorsett.

I guess I showed pretty early on which way my life would be headed. After all, what could those other guys do besides sit there and look pretty? Tony Dorsett could look pretty AND play football. To this day, I still swoon over his 99 yard run from scrimmage against the Minnesota Vikings--a record that can never be broken. Tied, but never broken.

And ya know what? Tony Dorsett has brown eyes.

So there you have it. My first two crushes. As for my current crush...well, that's the subject of a post unto itself.