When I was in the third grade, I got my very first real-life crush. On a Catholic priest. I was attending parochial school at the time, despite the fact that my family didn’t attend services, and even at the age of eight, I was deeply bored by the dusty little town we were living in. Mattel’s My First Ennui, anyone?
At the time, I couldn’t tell just what it was I found so alluring about him. He wasn’t like any of the other boys I knew, sure — mostly because he had facial hair and, um, wasn’t eight years old. All I knew at the time was that the best part of my week was when he came into my class to teach lessons in the careful Spanish he’d learned on a recent mission. He was so worldly! So intelligent! He was of legal age to buy the communion wine!
Reflecting on this first crush recently, I realized two things. First, in the intervening decade and a half, I absolutely haven’t gotten any better at falling for guys who will ever reciprocate my interest. He wasn’t only not the last celibate dude I’d fall for — he wasn’t even the last priest.
Second, though, and more important: people may mock or disregard the inappropriate crush, but I’ll be darned if it isn’t the single greatest available tool to let us know what we really want in a person.
Take the priest of my G-rated pre-tween dreams, for example: he was, after a lifetime of all female teachers, the smartest non-family man I’d ever met, and, even instinctively, I knew that that mattered. He was a firm but understanding disciplinarian of the I’m-not-mad-I’m-disappointed school, which I still admire. And, above all, he possessed a great gentleness of spirit.
Add these into the fact that he was over six feet tall (hey, these things matter), and you basically have a catalogue of every quality I’m still looking for in a man, even all these years later.
To say that I’ve since had scores or even hundreds of similarly inappropriate crushes over the years would be an understatement. I can’t remember a time in the past 16 years when I haven’t been chasing some impossible romantic dream.
In fact, most of the girls I know have done the same thing. Our bosses, our gay best friends, that eighty-year-old guy who wears a fedora to the post office? All fair game for crushes! And call me crazy, but I think these hopeless yearnings are more than inconvenient wastes of affection or mere distractions from the work of romance. I think they’re one of the greatest tools we have to help clarify our hearts’ desires.
Let’s be honest — who hasn’t let their affections be swayed by compromises or little daubs of pity? But why let “I want” be tempered by “yeah, but he’s got a really great apartment”? Plus, dude, at least you never risk sending embarrassing drunk texts to inappropriate fantasy men.
So to dreamy crushers, dream on, I say. That way, you’ll know exactly whom you seek the day you actually do find someone you just might work with. Just, uh, try not to get anyone defrocked in the process.
Photo Credit
“Pardon Moi” Original Bliss @ Flickr.com. Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved.
Recent That Kind Of Girl Articles:
- The Commander-In-Chief of Your Heart
- How To Make Someone You Love Stop Doing Something You Hate
- Trial By Ice
- In Defense of the Hostess
- Putting Down the Imaginary Dog
HA! Ya know, I always thought that inappropriate crushes would go away when I got married, but you know what? I’m still there. Glad to know I’m not alone.