Happy Thanksgiving, if you’re the kind of folks who celebrate such things. My mother didn’t give an option to decline the festivities and, having grown up in an environment where Catholic Guilt Syndrome was (and is still) employed as the weapon of choice, I’ll be heading out in a bit to do family things.
But, as Arlo Guthrie sang, “Alice — remember Alice?”… [listening to Alice’s Restaurant Massacree on Thanksgiving is about the only personal tradition worth keeping in my mind, but—]… let’s get on with my weird, cheap thoughts for the day. But first:
In my shower moments, maybe in those moments leading up to the shower as well, I was thinking (once again) about the nature of crushes.
If you are anything like most of the folks out there (there are a few who are immune to such things, I grant you), you’ve probably had at least one crush in your life. From Oxford’s book of the word-things a crush is: “a brief but intense infatuation for someone, especially someone unattainable or inappropriate“.
Just so we’re all on the same page-like…
I certainly recall some of my earliest crushes. I think a young lady named Carolyn was probably the most intense and worst of the first. She sat behind me in algebra class and leveraged that crush to get homework help. Oh, you can be sure about that. Did I ever stand a chance? LMFAO. Umm. No. She was, as they say, out of my league. I’ve heard stories, and I’m not sure how true they are, but I probably was better for it remaining unrequited if even half are true. That year was agony for me, though, as best as I can recall.
There were also those celebrity crushes that (I think) everyone has. Mine was Siouxsie (from Siouxsie and the Banshees), a fragment of which I still carry in my heart all these years later.
There have been others throughout the years, even a few fictional character crushes (I know, weirdo!).
What got me to thinking today about such things is that my twins are reaching that age of crushes. At least, I think the late tween years seems like a sensible point, and they have friends who have crushes (although it is far too confusing for me to understand those interactions these days), but they deny having any themselves. And that’s fine, I’m not concerned at all about it.
But then I got to wondering if there is an upper threshold where someone should stop having crushes on someone else. Is there an age where having a secret crush on someone is kind of weird or inappropriate? I’m not saying that it is something you plan to pursue or would like to pursue. Maybe just a “another time, another place… and assuming there was a chance in hell” vibe. Is there a point where you really ought to grow up, or do you think there is no real upper end as long as you’re situationally sensible about it?
I’m guessing I’m going to see a split in the responses, where some of you are going to put it into a “of course it is okay until you die” to a “umm, that’s a teenage thing” to “umm… never, and I mean ever, are you allowed to have a crush on a fictional character. That’s… creepy”.
Shoot your thoughts to me below.
And remember: “If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud. […] So we’ll wait till [the chorus] comes around again, and this time [I want you to sing along] with four part harmony and feeling.”
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
[Excepting Alice]
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
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