We Were Teenagers In Love - Part I
In which Teófilo reminisces about how he and his beloved began their convergence as he mustered the courage to say I think I love you!
Each time we have a quarrel, it almost breaks my heart '
Cause I'm so afraid that we will have to part
Each night I ask the stars up above
Why must I be a teenager in love?
One day, I feel so happy, the next day, I feel so sad
I guess I'll learn to take the good with the bad
'Cause each night I ask the stars up above
Why must I be a teenager in love?
~ Dion DiMucci
None of us knew anything about courtship when we started our mutual approach. Yet, we did it. In retrospect we were playing how close we could get to the other before raising a protective wall.
To this day it is a matter of gentle argument between us on how we met. I argue mutual acquaintances in our class introduced us. She insists we met by ourselves in the biology room, the only one arranged like an auditorium at the school. She's likely right. She has a better memory of these details than I do.
The thing is that, before long, I sat behind her in class. I would take her braid and tickle her with its brush-like tip behind her ears. Later on she would confide to me that she was outraged at the intrusion. She was also flattered by the attention.
I'm happy to report flattery won out in the end.
Casual conversations led to phone calls, using homework consultations as a pretext. The phone calls grew longer, straying into other subjects. We only met in school for class and that's how we saw each other at first. Then began the rituals proper to every teen-aged school courtship. These were: the furtive glances, note-passing in the hallway, more phone calls. "She smiled at me!" "What does it mean?" "She allowed me to take her hand!" "She avoided my eyes." "Why?" "She's not talking to me today, why not?"
Then, one day, I woke up in the morning and with a fresh mind I reached the ineluctable conclusion: I love her. When she is absent from my day-to-day life I miss her. When I'm by her side I don't want to leave. My first thought in the morning is of her, as well as the last one before I go to bed.
But does she feel the same about me? How can I know? How could I find out?
Yes, the whole situation is lame by adult standards, but the question had an existential edge for me at the time. It would be a few months before I got the answer. Seeking the answer began to consume me. I developed tunnel vision. If I was to love and be loved, it was to be then, or never.
I was sleeping and right in the middle of a good dream
Like all at once I wake up from something that keeps knocking at my brain
Before I go insane I hold my pillow to my head
And spring up in my bed screaming out the words I dread
I think I love you (I think I love you)
~ Written by Tony Romeo
Sung by The Partridge Family