Why must I be a teenager in love?

My First Love is a really important person in my old home city. Like, he runs many things and hangs out with the mayor and gets quoted in the News and Observer weekly.

That's very odd to me. He's married and looks like an older rounder version of the adorable mischievous boy he once was, the boy who used to write nasty notes on the board about our band teacher and sent him a package of deodorant as a Christmas gift one year that he stupidly opened in front of the class out of joy that quickly disintegrated when he read the accompanying card about the importance of personal hygiene. Wow, my first love was kind of an asshole in middle school. Then again, so was my band teacher.

We had an odd friendship. He liked me, but would only talk to me nicely when nobody else could hear. Around his friends he made jokes about what a nerd I was and he dated every girl in our class except me and my birdlike friend. But he would flirt and joke and tell me secrets as long as he was sure nobody would know.

He went to a different high school so I'd see him on occasion as he changed. He lived near my grandma so when I started driving I used to drive by his house and think about how he was right there, probably playing video games with his buddies. I saw him once at a football game, but he was a cool kid and I was running around in my marching band uniform so he ran off before anybody saw him talking to me. Clarinet was his old embarassing life. Now he was Mr. Student Council.

Periodically my mom will send me newspaper clippings where he's pictured or heavily quoted. "Remember this kid?" she'll write.

Yes mom, I remember. It's impossible to forget shedding that many melodramatic tears in my dark, candle-lit room repeatedly listening to Pearl Jam's "Black" staring into space and writing depressing, cryptic poetry.

Isn't that just such a teenage girl thing to do?

I emailed First Love recently, congratulating him on his success and telling him what I was up to. He emailed back a cordial response and that was it.

Funny how at the time I thought life wouldn't go on without him even though now it's kind of clear to me that he was a real bastard. Someday I'd be walking along at the mall and he'd see me and realized his mistake and we'd get married and live happily ever after with our 2.5 kids and the big dog and I'd have a job as either an FBI agent or a singer in a rock band.

My birthday's coming up next week, the kind of birthday that makes you ponder whether or not you met all those arbitrary goals you made for yourself back in school. So let's see. I'm not married to First Love, I have a cat instead of a dog, no kids, and I'm neither an FBI agent nor a singer in a rock band.

Thank God for small favors.