BUDDYITIS

Buddy

My longest running crush lasted more than three years and was a wild-eyed obsession with a guy named Buddy. I met him when I was twelve and was focused primarily on him until I met Greg, the guy that I would eventually marry. Buddy moved away once, and I dated other guys while Buddy was out of town or involved in romantic relationships of his own. He had steady girlfriends and so I would "go out" with other guys, but at nearly any time he could have called and asked me to be his girlfriend, and I would have dropped whomever like a hot stone. I was only days away from being sixteen when Greg and I met and at last Buddy's unintentional spell was broken.

Buddy had chocolate hair and warm swarthy skin. He had pretty eyes and probably the biggest bottom lip I had ever seen. I thought he was gorgeous and so did almost all my girlfriends. At one time or another: Nancy, Shan, Ramona, Jutannia, and Angie had deep crushes on the guy. I think Michelle fell prey to his charms as well. Only Cindy seemed immune to him and whatever she had I envied it. I felt trapped by my affection for a guy that found me only marginally interesting. I told Cindy it was like the opposite of an allergy. I was drawn to him and could not fully explain why. My mom said my friends and I all had "Budditis", and that made us laugh. I thought Buddy was very cute and he did have those interesting muscles that I had discovered I liked. He played several sports, so it was fun to go watch him keep his muscles in good shape. But the things that really pulled me to him had nothing to do with his appearance. Buddy was kind. He was confident and bold without being reckless. He seemed more mature than most guys. He smiled a lot and he laughed easily. He had a great sense of humor and he was pretty smart. He made me laugh. His mom had died and his dad worked a lot, so Buddy was alone much of the time and he admitted to me that he was lonely. I was maternally pulled to him and hoped to dispel the loneliness. When he moved back to my home town after being gone for several months, he told me he had missed me so much that he wrote me a long letter telling me how much he had appreciated all the times I had talked to him on the phone while his dad was at work and he was lonesome. Then, he said he realized he did not know my address and so he threw the letter away. I could have cried for want of it!

We spent literally hours on the phone with each other on a daily basis for, quite honestly, years. Our daily record was fifteen hours. We were on the phone from 9am until midnight that day. Keep in mind, this was before call waiting, so no one else could call either of us or either of our families while we hung out and clouded up the phone lines. We talked, and shared songs, ate our meals in each other's ears, and said, "hold on while I go to the bathroom." I invested so much time in that relationship that sometimes I could not fathom marrying anyone else. But, though he loved me as a friend, Buddy did not return my romantic affections. Sure, he was interested sex and willing to experiment in that direction with almost any decent looking girl (and perhaps even indecent looking ones) but he did not look at me and see anything permanent. I finally got a grip on that when I asked him, "What if you get married and I get married and our spouses don't like that we talk to each other on the phone every day?" In my heart that was a no brainer. I would never let anyone tell me I could not talk to Buddy, but I was so afraid of his answer that I held my breath.

He said, "Then we will have to stop talking on the phone."

I think he heard my heart breaking across the telephone lines because he added, "You know? I'm sorry, but marriage is a big commitment, and once we make that sort of commitment then we need to be respectful of our spouses." He paused for moment and then added, "No one will ever come between me and my wife."

I nodded, though he could not see me. If I were his wife I would not want anyone to come between us. I swallowed the lump of pain in my throat, "That's as it should be, I suppose."

"Yeah." He said.

The other thing that distanced me from Buddy was a cute little red headed guy named Peter. Pete became Buddy's step brother, and I was never quite happy with how much Bud seemed to dislike the kid. "How could someone dislike any child that much," I would wonder when Buddy would talk about how disgusting the child was. He told me that Peter was spoiled and "sissyfied", a real "cry baby". I would argue that I saw no sign of that, and Buddy would say that Peter kept it together pretty well when company was around. It was my contention that even if he were everything Buddy said, that would not be Peter's fault; It would be his mom's. But Buddy could not be enticed into cutting the kid an inch of slack, and I could not be enticed into seeing him as anything but an adorable little rid head with quick eyes, bright ideas, and a sweet smile. I wanted to someday have a son a lot like Peter and I wondered, "Would Buddy be so hard on his own kids?" Not seeing eye to eye on this created distance between Buddy and me.

I started calling him less and spending more time away from the phone. In my mind, I tucked Buddy away as a "buddy" and began looking more seriously at the other guys I knew. I was not wife material in his eyes, and I knew that had to go both ways. I also knew that all I was looking for was something gentler, something serious. Unlike my sister Sandi, who sometimes skimmed a book and just read the conversations, I was not the "just read the dialog" kind of girl when it came to books. I also was not that kind of girl when it came to boys. I was in it for the entire package and the long haul, whole heartedly ready to give all or nothing at all.

Not long after I met and fell in love with Greg, my future husband, Buddy started seriously dating a girl I had gone to school with at LFE. Lisa was one of the nice ones, and though a part of me still hurt enough to wonder what she offered him that I had not, I wished both of them every happiness. And I still do. They married after graduation. They are still together and have two very cute kids. I hope he meant it; I hope Buddy gave his whole heart to his marriage his all to their life together. I hope he has never let anyone come between him and his wife.