The Year as a Secret Crush Brought Me Joy and Connected Me with Humanity

His name was Lester, and he was a year ahead of me in school. I looked up his family’s number in the White Pages (which tells you how long ago). I asked to speak to him, and when he answered, we talked for nearly an hour. Then he had to go to bed. He kept asking me who I was, but I told him I was someone who thought he was a good person, and I never told him my identity.

Thankfully, we didn’t have Caller ID then, so he never figured out who I was. Although he promised that it didn’t matter what I looked like or where I lived, the conversations were so good that he knew he would be my friend in person. But, I knew differently, and I loved those evening calls and talking about all manner of subjects from school to sports to art.

I had a nickname, Little Monster, that resulted in bullying every day. Other students enjoyed shouting the name in my face as I walked down the halls between classes. I didn’t have friends because no one wanted to be subjected to such cruelty. Everyone kept their distance. Boys would tease other boys by saying, “There goes your girlfriend, Little Monster!” It was so painful, but I kept attending school because I loved learning. I was smart and made great grades.

Every day, I ran home after school, trying to escape the nastiness, and I never understood why no one tried to help. The conversations with Lester at night were my only connection with another person. My father wasn’t in our lives, and my mother was an alcoholic who never talked to my sister and me. So, I could not risk telling Lester who I was or embarrassing him by having it known that he was talking to me every night. He came from “the other side of town,” meaning that where we were in poverty, he had a mother and father in the home and was part of the well-to-do crowd. It would have ruined his reputation to be connected with me.

At the end of the school year, he graduated and went to college. Today, he is a doctor of medicine in our hometown. I never thought to reveal who I was, especially because I left my hometown at age 21 after adopting my sister’s four children and needed to get them out of poverty. I never talked to him after that year.

I am proud of who I am today, as I, too, am called “Doctor” at the university and Rev. Dr. in the church. I am still grateful for those conversations that connected me to the rest of humanity, made me feel like a normal person, and brought me so much joy. I am thankful that he was so amenable to speaking to his secret crush, and maybe even then, he had the makings of a good doctor, being able to sense my need and willingly meeting it. It made a difference in the person I am today.

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