Five Things I Miss About Young Love
I’ve talked before about the girl I had a crush on in second grade and how there are elements of that crush still a part of me whenever a new woman comes into my life. Everything about liking a woman seemed so much easier when I was younger. Ignorance was indeed bliss, and sometimes I wish everyone would just remember what it was like to like somebody the way they did in the days when we got an allowance.
What I am going to do is take this list back to the days before I got a driver’s license. I don’t know about the rest of you but for me and my dating life, the day I received my license to drive is the day everything changed and since then, very little has. So here it is, five things I miss about young love.
MY STATUS DID NOT MATTER
There were two types of guys back in the day: The boys who girls liked and the boys who girls didn’t like. I fell somewhere in the middle, I didn’t get all the girls, but I had a winning record. I always tell people the same reasons why a girl liked me back in the day is the same reason why a girl likes me now: I know how to talk to a woman, I know how to make her laugh, and I don’t look too bad doing either of those things. Unfortunately, as adults, I see a lot of guys who I know couldn’t get a girl to dance with them back in the day with two or three women on his arm all because he’s holding a bottle of Grey Goose in it. The man who girls didn’t like is now getting girls to like him because essentially he’s bought himself into the club and it’s a shame.
SHARING A LOCKER WAS WHAT THEY CALLED PUTTING A RING ON IT
It was all so simple back in the day, and nothing reminds me of this more than thinking back to the days when people used to share lockers. Remember that? That’s all we needed to show our commitment to one another. I wish I still had a locker sometimes, just so I can get a feel for how a woman and I might get along.
SCHOOL DANCES > THE CLUB
I went to a middle school named after Martin Luther King Jr., which means all our school dances were right after school and only went until like 6:00 at night. So what a lot of kids would do is bring their clothes for the dance with them and change right after the bell for the last period rang. Then we’d all line up and wait for the DJ to get ready. Once the music started playing, they let us in the dance and it would only be 30 minutes before folks would start dancing. And that was it. Just dancing. That’s all we did. Sure there was some macking and hanging going on, but there was no buying a drink for a woman, unless we’re counting the 65 cent cans of Coke we got at the vending machine. There was no parking lot pimping afterward, just kids either going straight to their parents car or walking home. There was no VIP. Everyone was important. And again, I can’t emphasize this enough, everyone was dancing.
YOU SAW THEM ALL DAY
When I think about young love today, I always laugh about this particular element of it. When we were in school, we saw the person we liked pretty much all day and then when school was out, we would rush home to do our homework, chores, eat dinner, and then get on the phone to talk to this person. The same person we saw all day. That amazes me because if I spent time with the girl I liked today all day, she’d probably get on my nerves and I’d probably impose the same rules on myself that my mother once employed on me: No phone calls after 9.
LIKING HER WAS ALL I NEEDED TO DO
Think about all the ways we used to show how much we liked a girl back in the days of recess and long division. Think about how little we had to spend, but how much we had to save just to get something as simple as some flowers. Think about chocolate milk and how she used to give you hers and how that right there was it. Think about how going to the movies was the big date, and it didn’t matter what you two saw together, because the movie wasn’t the point, being together was.
Think about all of that. Don’t forget it.
