The Crush

If you're lucky you have one. Girl or a guy, single or serially monogamous, hopefully there's someone who catches your eye and makes you think, "hmmm, what if...." The most depressed I've ever been in terms of my love life was when I lived in South Dakota, where I really felt (at times) like no possible romantic option existed. True, I wasn't settling, but no one seemed crushworthy to me then. Imagine my delight upon my arrival in Chicago.

It's not even the necessity of action, usually the best part of the crush is that you don't act on it. Especially if it's someone totally inappropriate in real life (like your boss, for instance, or the new freshman workstudy hire in your office). But just sensing the beginnings of reciprocated romanticism from across the room or in a casual encounter is really fun, or at least I think so. Crushes are all about the intangibility of signals. Deciphering whether him staring at you in class means something or whether he's really checking out the clock, or worse yet, the girl next to you, can take up many a pleasurable procrastinated minute. It's fun to have a prospect, sometimes even more fun than acting on said prospect.

I'm not going to go all Debbie Downer and tell my gentle readers that crushes are much better than reality because men in reality will always disappoint. That's probably true about any fictionalized love object who doesn't materialize to both cook you dinner and do your homework. Instead, I'll just advocate the crush itself, finding/creating one, not obsessing on one, but getting a bit caught up in the What If of one.