Do you remember the first time you had a crush on someone? When you had your puppy love? The innocence of love without anything sexual attached to it. No sexual expectations, no sexual demands, no sex, no lust. Just pure innocent love.
The first time I had a crush on someone was on a family friend. I was about 5 years old at that time and she was at least a decade older than I was. I have got three older cousins in Singapore who are peers with her. I got really jealous when one of my cousins was spending time with her at a family function that I started throwing a hissy fit. This crush didn’t last long though. We lost touch shortly after due to some family dispute. This crush and the revelation of it would come back to haunt me later in my life when we regained contact with her after many years. But that is a story for a different day.
Next, when I was in Primary 2 at the age of eight, I started crushing on a Chinese classmate called Liying. I would stay back after school to perform some classroom clean-up duties and in that pretext, I would kiss her chair as I lifted it to place it on the table. Now that I think about it, it was a really creepy thing to do. I would also wave her off when the school bus came to pick the students up. This ended very quickly when she turned up for school one day in short hair. I guess I was in love with her long, luscious hair more than the person itself.
A year older, I started crushing on a Malay girl next. She was new in class and had a really pleasant face and a beautiful smile. She reminded me of my favourite Bollywood actress, Madhuri Dixit. Things got a bit interesting here because the news of my “love” spread like wildfire in class. It came to a point where I had professed my love for her by writing it down somewhere. She had a common Malay first name, Siti. Coincidentally in class, there was another girl with the same first name and she was a friend of mine but tomboyish.
One day during recess, I was on my own trail only to find myself cornered by my friend and a whole host of other Malay girls. They wanted to know the truth on the identity of the Siti I was referring to. My reaction? I ran for the hills and spent a good part of the 30 minutes recess break running around trying to escape the clutches of these girls.
This “love” affair ended a year later as she changed class. This time, the tables were reversed. My sister had a best friend, a fellow Punjabi in her class and we were all in the same school. My mother and her mother became friends too so that meant lots of house visits for us; me, my mum and my sister. I was shyly entering a home full of females. My sister’s best friend was one of 5 sisters in that household. Her cousin sister too was there and that made it 6 girls. I later found out that one of the girls was crushing on me. That news came through my sister’s best friend to my sister to my mother. It didn’t get through to me at that time but it eventually did.
That year we had started going to Punjabi school on Saturdays and we went to the same centre as these girls. We travelled together as well. I turned pink in embarrassment when one day, the girl’s brother started announcing in the bus of his sister’s “love” for me. I avoided and ran from it as I wasn’t interested. This was now turning out into a full-fledged Bollywood film.
A year later in 1995 when I was 11 years old, together with my dad and sister, we somehow got my mother to cancel our Punjabi lessons. I was embarrassed and shy from the attention I was receiving and the link-up. That was the real reason behind the cancellation of Punjabi classes. After that decision, I felt like kicking myself because I missed the attention. I started falling in “love” with the girl that had a crush on me. Her name, Sharon.
That year before I took notice of my “love”, I started crushing on my English teacher who coincidentally was also Punjabi. I did very well in her class and was delighted to be top in the class but she brought me crashing right down to the earth when she called me out for failing my Maths. Anyways, this was short-lived. The flame burned brightly for Sharon. We were in different sessions. She was in her final year in Primary School as she was a year older and her classes were in the morning while mine was in the afternoon.
There wasn’t any way we could have met so I took up a Co-Curricular Activity in the morning, mini-Tennis despite not being interested in Tennis at all. That worked a treat. Our paths collided, we looked, we smiled, exchanged some words but neither really professed their “love” to each other. Bollywood love songs were ringing in my head and my chest was thumping when I saw her or we crossed paths. I vandalised on the school desk and on school property professing my love but never to the person herself.
Our year in “love” ended just like that. The family visits had reduced by then so contact was down to 0 now. Two years later in 1997 when I was 13, I had graduated from Primary School. On my way to Secondary School, I would catch up on my precious sleep by sleeping on the public bus. I had developed an uncanny habit of waking up at just about the right time so that I didn’t miss my bus-stop. In one of those journeys, I woke up to find Sharon sitting next to me.
I couldn’t believe my eyes. My heart was thumping again, I had butterflies in my stomach but I pretended to close my eyes and sleep some more. When my stop came, I excused myself and exited the bus. What an idiot! I was so shy to ever tell her that I love her and a coward too. For five years in Secondary School, I had not developed a crush on anyone. I was in an all-boys school and my exposure to other girls was non-existent. But in those years, if there was anyone that stayed in my mind, it was Sharon.
At the age of 17, when I was done with my Secondary School education, I was back in Malaysia for my holidays. A girl actually took the guts to profess her “love” for me. She got some help from my cousin brother in doing so. I rejected her without a second thought because I wasn’t attracted to her. We remained good friends though. I know you might think I am such a jerk to do so but I felt it was better being honest rather than taking a girl’s feeling for a ride.
On hindsight, I must say she was braver than I was. With that, my story of puppy love and crushes ended as things got more serious and less innocent in the coming years.
