I was thinking today about the tragedy of my first crush… well, it was a tragedy to me. I watched the television series, The Monkees, constantly as a little girl. I had to be 3 or 4 years old considering we were still living in Missouri. There was something about Mike Nesmith that made my little heart go “pitter-patter”. His side burns, his cool demeanor, his beanie… my little blonde self was IN LOVE. Then, I found out the truth. I was watching reruns. My parents had the news on one night and the newscaster was talking about Mike, my Mike. However, the picture they showed was not my adorable, fresh-faced, future boyfriend… it was of a man in his 40′s! A man my dad’s age! I was heartbroken… but I will always have a place in my heart for that goofball, as long as it’s an image of him at this age…

After we moved to Florida my heart started to beat for another boy I saw on the television screen, however; this one was closer to my age. It was November of 1990, I was 8 (about to turn 9) and I was watching Stephen King’s “IT”. I fell head over heals for Jonathan Brandis. I started to collect Jonathan’s “centerfolds” from BOP and BIG BOPPER magazines, they were plastered all over my pink room. I even won a stuffed animal cat of his in a contest that I entered in BOP magazine. My picture ended up IN the magazine posing with the cat! I still have the cat and my parents have the magazine (For the picture, I posed with the cat behind my grandma’s house-I had the same outfit on from an earlier post- http://tuesdayblu.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/10223_534093076211_18000678_31710850_2796524_n.jpg )

I looked SO cool… (1990′s cool )

I even had a fan because of my appearance in the teeny bopper publication. A girl who lived a town over from me saw my picture, looked up my number, and called me! (I think that was my 15-minutes of fame… )

My crush on Jonathan eventually faded, but I still felt sad when I heard he had committed suicide while I was a senior in college. Even before he passed, Ladybugs was on the rotation of movies that my roommates and I would watch in the wee hours of the morning.

As I became an older adolescent, I entered my “angsty” phase. It was the early 90′s and “grunge” described my look and my preference in music. I of course developed a major infatuation with Kurt Cobain. I read books and magazines about him, put Nirvana’s songs on repeat so I could decipher the lyrics and write them in my OFF LIMITS spiral notebook, and I collected many rare Nirvana cds and shirts (especially during my two trips to Europe in 1994 and 1996). My twelve-year-old heart was broken was he committed suicide (yes, I realize that two of my crushes took their own lives– hmmm, I don’t want to analyze that too much!). My sixth grade classmates comforted me, as everyone knew of my love for Kurt and Nirvana. Right after Kurt died, I started a scrapbook that I still have today.

Well, there they are… the crushes that defined my “coming of age”.

Who were your childhood/adolescent crushes?

xo