When I was in the seventh grade, I loved a boy named Justin Schaewe. Being familiar with the English language, I’m guessing that you pronounced that “sha-way.” If you did, you would have been wrong. His last name was actually pronounced “sha-VAY.” Tricky, huh? He looked like Ponyboy, played by C. Thomas Howell, in the movie The Outsiders, and I loved him. He was a year older than me.
We had a class together, it was Spanish and I sat behind and to the left of him. Ms. Cervantes was our teacher. Every year she would dress up as an M&M for Halloween because she was short and fat and loved to eat M&Ms. She was married to one of the art teachers at our school, whom I always believed was gay. They had different last names and two dogs of the chow persuasion. I don’t think they really loved each other.
The girl who sat in front of me in Spanish class was named Jennifer. She looked like an eagle. A pretty blond eagle with perfect bangs who played volleyball. She was in my grade, and very, very popular. Justin Schaewe was popular too, he hung out with Mike and Nicole (if you went to Falcon Middle School in the years 1992-1995, you would get the reference). In our Spanish class, we picked out Spanish names to call each other during class. Jennifer picked the name Esperanza, which means hope. I picked the name Cristina, which means Christina, because that was the closest thing I could find to Kristen.
For a brief period of time, Jennifer and Justin Schaewe dated. This was a terrible period for me, because I knew that this meant that Justin Schaewe could not love me. We were not fated to be together. It was also terrible\y awkward because Jennifer and I were in the same grade and had other classes together and we were friends, in that way that a popular girl is friends with the smart fat girl who is good at maintaining a conversation, and listens to you when you talk about your boyfriend whom she secretly loves, but you would have know idea that she loves him, because to you she is so clearly out of his league. Duh.
Just when I was getting over the fact that Justin Schaewe could never love me, his grandfather died and he was not at school for a week. He had to travel somewhere to go the funeral, which was very exotic, because we lived in a small country town and I had only flown in an airplane once. I know all of that because Ms. Cervantes told our whole class. I think there are laws against that now.
Jennifer and Justin broke up eventually, Spanish class ended and we all moved on with our lives. Since Justin was a year older than us he continued his education at Falcon High School. (I am also a proud alumni of Falcon Elementary School. I told you it was a small rural town). Later, I transitioned from Falcon High School to Sand Creek High School, the other, brand new, high school in our district. Most of the kids at that school were the city kids who were bussed out to Falcon High School, and had gone to Horizon Middle School, our rival. But there were a handful of the country kids like me, who opted to attend Sand Creek because of its promising future and because it was a school that didn’t allow students to hitch their horses to the front of the building while they were in class.
One of those was Justin Shaewe. Finally we had a special bond that was shared with only a handful of other students at Sand Creek: we were the country kids. By no means did this make us friends. He continued to be popular, and I continued to be smart and fat. He wore ski goggles on the side of his head, even in the warmest weather and I wore long-sleeved cardigans purchased from Goodwill. Our taste in fashion may have been different, but he and I shared the bond of having known each other through elementary and middle school, and when he nodded casually to me as we passed in the hallway I knew it was because he was remembering the time when I sat behind and to the left of him in Ms. Cervantes Spanish class, and not at all because his silly orange goggles were slipping down the side of his face.