Fandango’s Dog Days of August continues with today’s theme: “your first love.”

It was 1964. The Beatles had just come to America. I was in 6th grade and I sat behind Steve in school. Steve was nice to me and traded Beatles cards with me. He had a huge collection of Beatles cards! I didn’t because the cards usually came in a pack of gum, and I didn’t chew gum – it wasn’t allowed in school nor at home.

However, I did manage to acquire a few cards – mainly my friends’ duplicates – and it was enough for Steve to notice me.

Actually, Steve had already noticed me. Whenever I dropped something on the floor, he was quick to pick it up and hand it to me. I started doing the same for him, which made him smile. He would sometimes tell me dumb jokes or what he thought of that day’s math homework. When the teacher had volunteers write a symbol on the board which would represent a number in our “new numbering system,” his was chosen, but mine wasn’t because the teacher said it was too hard to write fast. Steve encouraged me, telling me to “try again” but alas – none of my invented symbols were chosen.

I had the biggest crush on him because no boy had ever really been nice to me before.

My best friend Gloria had a crush on another boy named Steve in our class, so we used to call them “Him 1” (my Steve) and “Him 2” (her Steve) so that no one would know who we were talking about. But of course, girls have a way of finding out who likes who and a girl in my class found out about my Steve and decided to tell him at recess that I liked him.

She waited until the group of boys he was in was nearby, and she called out to him, “Hey, Steve!” He looked over at her and she began to tell him, “Hey, Steve, Katy– ” That was as far as she got, because the other girl she was with thought it was better to keep it a secret from him that I liked him. So she interrupted and said, “Katy is mad at you because of something you said to her.”

I had no idea this had happened, so I couldn’t understand his change in attitude toward me. When he dropped a pencil later that day, and I leaned over to get it, he grabbed it himself and didn’t even look at me. He didn’t ask me if I wanted to see the new Beatles cards he’d gotten (I knew he had gotten them because he was showing them off to other boys) whereas before he always showed me his new cards. He wasn’t overtly hostile, but he tried very hard to ignore me from then on.

On the way home a few days later, I told Gloria that “Him 1” was acting very strangely toward me. The next day, through the girl gossip grapevine, she found out the whole story and told me what had happened.

So that was the end of our “relationship” (if you could call it that). I didn’t get over him right away, though. When I walked downtown with my friends to see the Beatles movie that summer, we passed right by his house and I looked at it with a mixture of affection and sadness. I wanted him to come outside right then so I could talk to him, but he didn’t.

The next year we went to junior high, and Steve was in some of my classes again. He had gotten over his disappointment and once more acted very friendly toward me. I could have taken his hints but instead I ignored him, which wasn’t hard because we didn’t sit near each other. Anyway, I took the easy way out because I was too shy to do anything about his overtures toward me, and eventually he lost interest.

Images courtesy of Google Images.