Swallowing Your Pride
From a young age, I discovered the risks of expressing your interest in a guy without knowing if his feelings were mutual. In elementary school I stuck to drawing hearts around their names in my diary and stealing baseball caps on the playground. I was inexperienced and safe.
In middle school, as sharing crushes became common bonding among girlfriends, the hearts became published doodles around their names in notes and on binders. This seemed harmless until one of my subjects identified our encrypted initials on one of these pictorial declarations, and expressed his sheer horror in front of our entire history class. I retreated and kept future infatuations private.
When I got to high school, I held on to some of these fears, but learned to work through them in small steps. Although I didn’t start shouting my professions of love from clock towers, I took every school dance as the opportunity to practice. Inspired by the concept of Tolo, where the girls ask the guys, I invited a male friend to every dance up until my senior year.
As a senior, I had established a large group of friends, had been accepted to my first choice college, and was captain of our cheer squad. I decided that if there was ever a time to make a bold move this was the best position I could be in. Always having had a thing for athletes, I had developed a crush on one our star basketball players, a shy junior who shined with confidence on the court, but pretty much kept to his fiercely loyal group of guy friends during school hours.
I accosted one of these friends during math class and asked if the guy even knew who I was. His friend said that he did, but that they never really talked about girls. He was a completely focused student and athlete. I decided to take a chance.
After the final bell that day, I approached Mr. Basketball at his locker and, having never had a full conversation in our lives, went with the only solid technique that I’d been running drills on for years- I asked him to our upcoming dance. He looked at me quizzically before brushing me off with a simple “no” and a look of annoyance before turning back to face his open locker.
I was heartbroken, but I realized something. As much as I dreaded our next basketball team, where I was sure the entire team would take the court laughing over the tale of my humiliation, I had conquered a fear. Sure, I didn’t get what I wanted, but I discovered that it wouldn’t kill me to take the risk. Odds are, if you keep asking, eventually you’ll come across a “yes”.