When I was in Jr. High, a new roller skating rink opened in our small town and it was a very big deal. We’d grown tired of bowling. We didn’t have a mini golf center. Going to the movies was okay, but you couldn’t really have a conversation with boys there or hang out and hope to meet anybody. The nearest mall was thirty miles away.

The skating rink became a place where we could be dropped off by our parents for a few hours and hope to meet and mingle with friends and with boys. It seems to me that once the skating rink opened, my friends and I were there every week. And there he was. The boy next door was… the Skate Guard.

Oh he was dreamy!

Skating like the wind on roller blades, blonde 90’s hair long on the top hanging down to his cheek bones and shaved around the sides. Tall, older, handsome, in charge… of “the Plate Game”!

He called the shots and all the girls swooned. He held the power to send paying customers into a time out for misbehaving in the rink. The way he could skate backwards, the way he blew his whistle… what a hunk!

Some of my more audacious girlfriends got up the nerve to ask him to couple skate a few times. As far as I was concerned, he was untouchable. It was like having a crush on a celebrity. He was too old, too cute, and too cool to ever notice the likes of me. I didn’t even bother trying. But I noticed him… I always noticed him and thought to myself, “There he is. The boy next door. Isn’t he dreamy!”

Over the next several years, through Jr. high, high school, and beyond, I saw the boy next door around our little town, all the time. At the movie theatre, shopping, little league games, school plays, Friday night high school football games … I saw him, I noticed him… and that was the end of it. I never spoke to him. I tried not to point and stare. I avoided eye contact, but I always noticed him.

I wished he would notice me. I wished he would walk over and say something to me. And then I would drop all that silly far fetched wishing and move on.

Because those things were never going to happen.

Because he didn’t even know I was alive.

Because there were plenty of other boys around besides him.

Because some of those other boys were starting to give some attention, to me.

To be continued…