Once Upon a Time: True Stories of an Aspiring Writer

12: Morgan's Museum of Love Interests: Middle School Wing

IT SEEMS WEIRD TO SAY that I never cared for romance, even though I was married to my first crush. Well, the first one who existed, anyway.

Don't get me wrong. I was never a sucker for the lovey-dovey. Fancy dinners and roses and the word "babe" never held appeal for me. Yet I can hardly remember a time in my life when I didn't have a crush. To show you, we will now be traveling through the Men's Wing of my Personal History Museum. Pay special attention to the statues of the guys---they all have their own fascinating history. 

HARRY POTTER

I've never not been in love with someone since fourth grade. That was when I read the Harry Potter series. 

My mom, sister, and I would gather together every evening in third grade after our teacher gave us a goal to read for fifteen minutes a day, which was how it all got going. Eventually I had a mad crush on the guy, starting when I was ten. 

(By "the guy," I'm not sure if I mean the character or the actor. I do remember that I once spent an afternoon sitting on the lawn, literally praying for Harry's flying car to come down our street so we could meet each other. Eek.) 

As I was traveling in the car to school on one cloudy, gray morning, I felt strangely happy. Like life had more meaning and excitement now, even though I was on my way to an afternoon of standardized testing. 

And as I got to school and they started passing out the tests, I couldn't help but be happy at my revelation. Harry Potter was the greatest character to ever exist! The books were great! He was such an amazingly cute person! It really added excitement to life. Any time I hit the doldrums, I could just tap into my Potter fantasies and get a hit of happy. So for the next few months, I would bookmark every fan site I could find on the family computer, watch the movies whenever I got the chance, read fanfictions, the works.

And the movies! I waited so eagerly for new movies to come out. I was furious that my parents always made me wait a few weeks to avoid the crowds, and was jealous of classmates who got to see them before I did. 

But when I finally got to the theater, the experience was magical. Even when I watched the movies at home, it was fantastic--I always had a dream about him that night. 

I felt this way until sixth grade but regretted it quickly. For a health class project, we had to create posters about ourselves and present them to the class. As one girl put her poster up, I noticed something suspicious under the "Future Hopes and Dreams" column: a Photoshopped image of her and Harry Potter dancing together! An outrage! She looked straight at us and told us seriously, "I want to marry Harry Potter." 

This statement was met with feeble half-laughs from the other girls and a grimace from me. My face burned redder than her hair. I tried to look as pissed off as I could muster. I had competition! 

I had to step up my game, for one never knew when Harry would show up at school one day! I mean, the girls' room happened to have a very long mirror which I was convinced could be the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. We could have Voldemort living in the basement! Until the happy day when a serpent would be set on the students and Harry would have to come to rescue us, I simply took solace in knowing that if he were to show up at school, he would pick me. After all, I was the one with HP calendar pages taped all over my room and who had dreamed about him every night after I watched the movies! We would be perfect together.

Of course, this was not the first time I was worried about competition. I brought Potter-themed valentines for my fifth-grade class party the year before, and the same girl went around collecting them from other people. That was the first clue that I was not his only fan. Another instance came after another girl, a fourth-grader named Faith (who would later allegedly also start dating a real crush of mine) talked about the books so much that I thought she was after him too. I still found it unbelievable that there were  three of us in one school who wanted to date him.