First Love Is A Tender Memory

By Nancy K. Crevier

His name was Owen, and he sat kitty-corner from me, the next row over, in our first grade classroom. Even under the eagle-eyed scrutiny of Miss McKennett, Owen managed to pass me numerous missives of his love during that spring semester. He was freckle faced and earnest, and had ears that needed growing into. My response, to roll my eyes and run the other way on the playground, might have been different had I known how many years it would be before anyone gazed at me again with that kind of unabashed adoration.

First love is funny and wonderful, not to mention embarrassing and painful. But it is always fun to look back on and wonder, “What if…?”

Funny and wonderful made up Newtown resident Lois Barber’s recollection of first love. “Well, like all women in the baby-boomer age category,” she said, “of course [my first crush] was Paul McCartney. I remember my father saying to my mother ‘Look at Lois’s toes!’ as I sat on our living room couch, my bare feet resting on the wall-to-wall carpeting, watching the black and white screen image of The Beatles performing on The Ed Sullivan Show.” In an effort to keep from screaming like the crazed girls in the studio audience, she had curled her toes under so tightly, she could not uncurl them.

Her first real life crush, though, was in third grade, and falls into the embarrassing category. “We had to switch seats for reading groups. In the middle of the reading period, the girl who sat in my seat suddenly walked up to the teacher and handed her a folded note. The teacher said the note was found on my desk and read it out loud,” said Ms Barber. It was a note declaring an admirer’s love for her. The teacher demanded to know who wrote it, “and finally, Michael Rosenbloom raised his hand.”

About ten years ago, Ms Barber’s children found her sixth grade graduation autograph book. “In it, Michael Rosenbloom told me he was going to become a doctor and that he would always love me and wrote his phone number. Even though their father, Jim, was sitting right there, my kids demanded that I call the phone number…”

With her children’s dares and her husband’s blessing, she dialed the number and, “A woman answered. I asked to speak to Michael Rosenbloom …” To her relief, she heard, “Sorry, you have the wrong number.”

 Local family therapist Ruth Schofield’s first memorable crush was at the tender age of 3½, she recalled. “It was the boy who lived across the street. His name was Jimmy. We used to play together in his yard on the swing that hung under their screened-in porch. I remember him well. We were in a play together, which his cousin, Nadine and my older sister, MaryAlice, wrote, directed, and acted in,” said Ms Schofield. The love affair ended, sadly, when her father changed jobs and the family moved from New Jersey to New York. “Oh, such memories,” said Ms Schofield, “and oh, so long, long ago!”

Newtown High School Principal Charles Dumais’s memory of his first crush is succinct: “I believe that it was Mrs Polidoro, lunch monitor at Mark Twain Elementary School …”

First love was painful, for some. “I particularly remember the summer of my 12th year,” Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra said. “My brother Mike and I worked together every day to manage the crops and the animals [on our farm]. Mike was — and still is — my best friend. Mike’s buddy, David, would often come to help out with the chores, and then we would all swim in the pond. I remember suddenly feeling awkward and shy around David. Somehow his status had changed — he became more to me than my brother’s friend and an occasional helper around the farm. Unfortunately, the change in view was only in my mind. No mutual transformation was taking place in David’s view of me,” she said. “I still think of David as my first unrequited love …”

Town Historian Dan Cruson recalled the first time he fell in love, “Like it was yesterday. Her name was Helen Jo Todd, and I was a freshman in college.” Alas, he said, Helen Jo stood him up for another (with less admirable qualities, he professed). “I was love sick for six months after,” said Mr Cruson.

Donna Randle’s first love segued to her love affair with the New York Mets. “When I was 6 years old, I lived in Flatbush, Brooklyn. We lived in a two-family, semidetached brick house. All the front yards were adjoining and everyone had a wrought iron fence defining his or her little yard,” she explained. “In the afternoon, I would play with my younger sister ‘out front.’ One of my favorite things to do was to jump rope. Since my sister was 3 years old, that was difficult to do without help,” recalled Ms Randle.

Now comes the true love part of her story: “Next door to us lived a young man, who was about 21 years old. He was tall, handsome, and very sweet. If I was in the front of my house when he came home, he would always tie the rope to the wrought iron fence and turn the rope for me to jump. I thought he was really dreamy and looked forward to seeing him every day in the summer. Whenever he saw me, he made me feel very special, and I am sure that is why I adored him. He only lived next door to us for about two years,” she said. She never found out the name of her handsome jump rope partner, “but when I got older, I learned that our neighbor was a young rookie who played baseball for the New York Mets. And for no other reason than the kindness of this young man, I have been a Mets fan ever since.”  

“Ricky Cochran was my first crush, fourth grade,” confessed C.H. Booth librarian Kim Weber. “He chose me first for kick ball. He had red hair and freckles, and he was really good at sports. He was also good at tag and teasing girls,” she said. How much more loveable can a guy get?

The first grade classroom was also, like mine, the scene of first love for residents Ann Marie Mitchell and Nancy Metzger.

“Ahh! The first boy that made my heart skip a beat — lub…lub — was Billy Byrd,” Ms Mitchell said. “He was so cute with his white-blonde crew cut and contrasting large, black, rectangular plastic eyeglasses. The best part of my first grade school day was recess, after lunch, when we spent time chasing each other on the playground. We never caught each other. We merely ran ’round and ’round the merry-go-round, the see-saw, and the swings. He was so much fun,” she declared of that love of a simpler time and place.

For Ms Metzger, “Ralph” was the object of her desire at that tender age, and she bore the brunt of her exposed love with her brother’s teasing at the dinner table, “Ohhh, Ralphie… smooch, smooch, smooch.”

“He sort of looked like Dennis the Menace,” mused Ms Metzger recently. The young ember of love was never fanned to a fire, though. “It was one-sided,” she sighed. “It sort of described the rest of my love life through my twenties.”

Like so many cases of unrequited love, “I hope he never knew about it,” she added.

I suppose we could stalk our early Cupids with the arrows of Facebook and find the who, what, when, where and why of those long-ago true loves.

But I recall my mother’s adage: “Ignorance is bliss.” I think this is an instance where that is good advice.

Wherever you are, Owen, thanks for the memories.