Missed That Catch
In 8th grade, I had this all-consuming crush on a guy in my science class. He was pretty popular, but didn’t run with one set group. Meanwhile, I was at the epicenter of the anime club crowd, and very much obsessed with Lord of the Rings and similar high fantasy.
Despite our middle school social class differences, this guy and I had a good rapport going in 5th-period science every day. He would ask me for a pencil every day in class, and I ended up just keeping a bunch in my backpack just for him. We grew to be pretty good friends, at least in my mind.
Somewhere in this time, he was elected school president. This meant that at the end of the year, he would get to throw out the first pitch at our annual baseball game/fundraiser night. That was the night when everything went wrong.
I begged my parents to get our family seats at the game. They obliged, and by some miracle, our seats were right below his family’s. As we were all waiting for the game to begin, people were tossing around beach balls in the stands.
I could see my crush yearning to catch the ball, so I reasoned that if I caught it and tossed it to him, this would result in my declaration of undying love.
I began watching the nearest beach ball, half hoping that I had some sort of latent telepathy or something, since that was the only way my nerdy, uncoordinated self was ever going to catch the ball. Lo and behold, the beach ball drew near! I saw it flying closer, closer, and then it was right over me.
Instantly forgetting my lack of athletic talent, I leapt up, arms outstretched like some olympian. I regretted it almost instantly. The ball soared right over my head just as I reached the apex of my jump. And then I began to fall.
What I hadn’t realized was that I had not only jumped up, but I had also jumped out quite a way. So when I descended, I didn’t land back in my row of seats at all. Instead, I landed in the row below me, smack on top of my pervy math teacher and his girlfriend.
This caused quite a stir in the crowd, and of course my crush saw the whole thing. He and his family had a laugh at my expense. It was utterly humiliating. Needless to say, there were no grand declarations of love that evening.
Of course, because I’m stupid and can’t let go of things, I continued to have a crush on this guy for the next four years. This crush also spawned a lot of angsty poetry and thinly-veiled wish-fulfillment fiction. Story Credit: Reddit/LadyOfIthilien