I Stalked My Middle School Crush

When I was in middle school, the boys I liked had no idea I existed. They were tall, manly eighth graders while I was a weird, platinum blonde sixth grader. Since I didn’t know how to flirt with boys (which would have also required me to know how to talk to boys), the only way to get my crush to notice me was to stalk him.

The first boy I had a crush on in middle school was named Skyler (name has not been changed). He was extremely tall, played baseball and had a tan. He was the perfect fantasy crush. I stood outside one of my classrooms EVERY DAY because I knew exactly what time he would walk by. I would have my friends stand with me and laugh really loud and tell me how funny I was. Little did I know, middle school boys aren’t attracted to humor. Maybe if I had asked my friends to say how good I was at giving hand jobs behind the portables, he would have noticed me. But since he didn’t, I had to resort to other methods.

Because I read tons of Encyclopedia Brown and Nancy Drew in fifth grade, I knew how to sleuth. I found out Skyler’s mom’s name from my mom who volunteered with her, and then I typed her name into the property appraiser website to find out Skyler’s address. I know I could have just looked them up in the phone book, but that wouldn’t have told me how much their house is worth or how many bathrooms they have.

The next day (and every day after that), I had my mom drive me past his house telling her I just liked going on drives with her after school so we could talk like the Gilmore Girls (I knew mentioning Gilmore Girls would set off her “I want to be BFF with my daughter” weakness, and she would do whatever I wanted).

You can probably figure out that driving past a boy’s house over and over also didn’t get him to notice me because for that to happen he would have had to put down the video games and come outside right when I was driving by. I had to get sneakier.

My friends helped me out and found out that Skyler had a crush on a SEVENTH GRADER named Jenna (not changing the names, guys). So, while I was sleeping over at a friend’s house, my friend and I made up a fake instant messenger screen name and messaged Skyler pretending to be Jenna. It took him about an hour to figure out we were fakes. He wasn’t the smartest guy, probably not even close to average, but he was SO TALL, so I didn’t care. After he told us that stupid Jenna was “the one” (still without knowing who he was actually talking too), I decided to tell him who I was. And then he broke my middle school heart. He did know who I was after all. He told me I was “the tall ogre that stands in the hallways with your stupid friends waiting for me to walk by.”

Excuse Me?

For starters, I was 5’7, which is tall for a middle school girl, but I thought that made me model-like. Second, my friends were not stupid, Skyler. We were in honors classes, and you were not. It also took you an hour to figure out that I wasn’t the girl you were crushing on over instant messenger (the screen name BlondeGirl12 is SO convincing).

After crying for about a week and listening to my Britney Spears heartbreak soundtrack, including “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart” and “Dear Diary”, I gave up on Skyler. I still saw him in the hallways sometimes, and this was before I had a cell phone so I couldn’t just pretend to text to avoid eye contact, so I just looked at the ground.

Then, during the summer before seventh grade, I learned that Skyler was moving away. He moved to a small town in Georgia probably to be closer to hunting grounds and people who refuse to drive anything but a monster truck. So by the time I entered seventh grade, I was able to concentrate all of my stalking on my new crush Curtis, who walked past my classroom everyday before lunch.

This essay was submitted by Crushable reader Jessica Zaleski. You can follow her on Twitter @Jesszalesk.