From the Chronicles of My Life's Most Embarrassing Moments

I've decided to share with you some of those times in my life when my face turned red. I don't know what is possessing me to do this, but go ahead and enjoy my discomfort. Here's the first installment:

The year was 1994 and I was a junior in college. It was summertime. (I loved going to BYU so much that I stayed and went to summer school instead of going home. Is that normal?). Going to school in the summer was intense but I managed to squeeze in quite a bit of fun. And a serious crush.

We'll call him Chuck (because that's his name). Chuck and I did a lot of group activities with our friends: went to the drive-in, jumped off bridges into water of questionable cleanliness, had giant wrestling matches on mattresses in my living room, drove to Manti for the pageant--all kinds of fun stuff. And through it all Chuck and I would flirt endlessly. I liked him, but, of course, was sure he didn't like me.

As smitten girls are wont to do, I started thinking about him during my classes and hoping I'd go home to find a message of his on my answering machine. I doodled his name intermittently in my class notes. I doodled my name with his last name. *Cringe* I think I even named our children and wrote their names in my notebook. I was head-over-heels.

It started to seem like maybe Chuck liked me, too. Although he didn't ask me out on a "real date," Chuck would frequently come over and visit when I got home from working my custodial job on campus (9 pm). We could and would spend hours chatting about anything and everything (exept slavery--we quickly discovered that was a topic not to be touched; Chuck was from the South and had a completely different take on the Civil War than this Yankee). But I digress.

So, Chuck was over one night and we were studying/talking/flirting. At one point, he reached over and grabbed my notebook to see what kinds of things I was studying. I thought nothing of it. Until he started leafing through it's pages and stopped on a page of doodles. And by that, I mean my doodles of names. I was horrified. I grabbed notebook, snapped it shut and clutched it to my chest.

Chuck choked on a laugh, "What was that?" he asked. I remember thinking, How can I get out of this? and then realizing that there was no way I could get out of it. The boy I had a terrible crush on had actually seen my "Mendy Simpson" doodles in my English notes! I wanted to die. Instead, I sat in petrified silence and then opted to confess.

It turned out to be fine. I'm pretty sure he already knew I liked him and he didn't immediately run screaming from the room (in fact, he kept coming back); I think he liked me, too. But for a moment there, I dreamed of a natural disaster hitting my apartment and making it possible that I'd never have to look at Chuck again.
And boy, was my face red!