Back then it seemed like it was a long walk to the bus stop in the early mornings, but actually it was only about a six-minute walk. I remember one particular morning walking to the bus stop and I was practicing what I was going to say to this girl that I really liked in my class and had written a ‘Do You Like Me?’ note to the previous night. She sat one row away from me in class and I always liked the way she would run and giggle and say “You can’t catch me!” when we had recess outside. Although I’d carefully written the note and repeatedly rehearsed my lines when I was going to hand it to her, I fell way short of being a romantic Romeo as I got painfully nervous and talked myself out of giving her the note and I never uttered one single word to her that whole entire day at school.
When the bus dropped us off after school that day it was my longest walk ever. I still had that stupid note folded in my pocket, which I’d carried around all day at school. As my brothers and cousins got off the bus laughing and talking about their day at school and their plans for the rest of the evening, I just hung my head down and kicked at the rocks and mounds of dirt in the road as if I was kicking myself in the butt for being so scared, stupid and shy.
About halfway down the road I got tired of having that stupid note in my pocket so I took it out, crumbled it up and tossed in the bushes along the dirt road. It’s the year 2015 now and it’s been nearly 44 years since the night I wrote that ‘Do You Like Me?’ note. Ironically, the young girl who captured my heart back at Robert E. Lee Elementary School is now one of my friends on Facebook (but she doesn’t know that I had a crush on her though).
And, by the way, the old dirt road, County Road 715, that I grew up on in Spotsylvania, well today, it’s a paved road and it was renamed Camp Town Road quite a few years ago. – Randolph Randy Camp
More at http://www.goodreads.com/randolphcamp
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