To Whom It May Concern

Another Bit Of fraNk Trivia, Perhaps Not As Useless

"I found love at first sight one time... in fifth grade"

It's odd really, I never really give it much thought anymore. In fact, most often I don't even recognize that particular time in my life as being in love but if it wasn't then intense infatuation at first sight would at least be an appropriate description.

Emily Armstrong... that was her name. We had advanced reading class together, I remember walking into that class, I was one of the last ones in because my regular classroom was way in the basement, so the people from our class were always last to get to the other 5th grade classrooms on the third floor. The reading class was overflowing, so everyone from my basement classroom had to sit at a separate table at the front of the class, to make up for having so many students.

I remember looking into the first row, and there she sat. I was spellbound and probably stared for like 10 minutes. You have to understand something, that in the 5th grade, being all of 10 years old, I didn't understand at all what was wrong with me, I felt like I couldn't breathe, like there was this aura radiating from this person and I had to be within the vicinity of it because of how that made me feel.

Thus, I would find myself running around the playground doing ANYTHING stupid just to get her attention, and many times of course I did, and whenever she noticed me it was like this surge of adrenaline rushing thru my veins. This crossed over after the end of the school year into the summer, when I would ride my bike the five miles into town to go swimming at the public pool *I would have probably rode and swam there anyway, but Emily being at the pool was just an added bonus*. I would try crazy things off the diving board, again, anything to get her attention, anything to make her smile. I probably looked like the most insanely hyperactive fool, but nothing really mattered as long as she saw me.

An interesting fact about all of this, is that I never had more than just a passing greeting from her, never said more than maybe 5 to 10 words to her at a time, but that was enough for me to suddenly float high as a kite, elation beyond compare, to have any interaction with her.

Around July of that summer, I was sitting near Emily and her friends when I overheard something that knocked the wind out of me just as sure as being hit by a large truck... Emily was moving away, in fact, this would be her last day in my hometown. I can remember that feeling of complete desperation overtake me, I wanted so badly to say something, anything, but as always, I did nothing other than watch her for the rest of that afternoon. At 4 pm, she left, and I followed her and her friends out of the poolhouse, and I rode my bike past them and acted goofy just once more, and they all laughed, like they always did.

I sat on my bike and watched them as they turned the corner, they were of course oblivious to my feelings, although I'm sure that they were also very sad about Emily moving away. I rode my bike past the pool, and rode all the way home and hid out at the farm, utterly crushed. I didn't go back to the pool for quite a while after that...

That was my first taste of love, infatuation, whatever you may call it. I remember wondering what ever became of Emily Armstrong, but never throughout the next couple of years did I have the guts to ask any of her friends about her, I was always too afraid. And with time's passing I found other girls that I liked, but Emily was the only person who has ever smitten me at first sight.

Song: Swing Swing by The American Rejects, and other songs such as Laid, off of the American Wedding Soundtrack, had I Known it was this good I would have purchased this thing like a year ago.