April 20, 2010
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My First Character Study...
When I was in fifth grade, a friend was moping because she didn't have a boyfriend. I didn't have one either, but my friend said she'd die if she didn't have a boyfriend soon. So when I came across a school photograph of a beautiful boy in a box of used books, I hatched this ingenious plan- a nonexisting cousin. He was the perfect boyfriend. He wrote meaningful love letters to her that he mailed to my house and I passed on to her at school. She carefully replied and I made sure they got back to him. 
Since the mail was "slower" then, I could count on having an entire week to write the perfect letter and with access to scads of poetry books in the bookstore, I had time to find the most obscure love poems for her. And when he wasn't writing her, I was busy making up his back story and telling her intimate details of his life- what his farm looked like, the name of his horse, how well he did in the rodeo, how much he hated farm work when it didn't include animals, how he saved a pig from dying, how he loved math and baseball.
And then... after several months, when I was bored with the whole project and she was still enamored with the fictional guy in my brain, I had him break up with her. Things were getting complicated. She wanted his phone number and didn't believe me when I said boys on farms in Iowa didn't have phones. She wanted his address and didn't buy the fact that his parents would beat him if they found out he was writing to a girl. What I didn't expect was that she'd take the break up so hard- refusing to eat, crying nonstop, and not going to school.
I would have gotten off scott free until her Mother called my MOTHER to talk about the boy and MY mother said that while I had boy cousins in Iowa that they were all much younger than me. We had a long talk at my house about abusing the trust others have in you and how I had hurt my friend in spite my good intentions after that phone call .
"But she was really happy," I whined.
"It wasn't real," my mother said. "You convinced her to fall in love with a lie."
"It was a good lie," I muttered from the room where I'd spend all my free time for the next month.
Years later, I met a boy in Iowa- the son of the man my aunt was seeing- a quasi-non-blood cousin. He was beautiful, loved riding, hated math and school, and wrote horrible love poetry. But he kissed nicely... and at the time, that made up for all his faults. I realized that a boy on paper who couldn't kiss wasn't much use at all. I wanted to apologize to the friend, but we weren't friends after the whole "Unreal boyfriend" thing. But I suspect she never had a more attentive guy than the one I created in fifth grade.
Such is the power of words... something I didn't understand in fifth grade. I never understood even back then how you could fall in love with someone you'd never met, how you could feel so deeply about someone you never touched. A gift is a terrible to abuse- or at least so my mom used to say after one of these incidents.
Comments (13)
When i was in the 5th grade WE were enlightened, as i'd find out when my family moved from MommaRose land to the backwoods of rockaway...and i was in "love" with Judy B...a Laurie Partridge lookalike....
SHE kicked my face in, with the help of Ronnie W...[TAG this entry *er history*]. and notice--KEEP their last names out of it--Judy felt like shit last i heard, and Ronnie is NOW the REVEREND ______...they make book three though
True story? What a tale! I was a creative kid, but I never thought of making up a fictitious cousin. I did, however, invent a quasi-stalker guy named Max who sent love notes to my college girlfriend telling her to dump me. Despite that lunacy, she married me anyway.
@EminemsRevenge - at least ppl change!
@ideaguy - true tale. i was the kid who couldn't tell fiction from truth and it got me in all kinds of trouble. it always labeled me as a liar. i did have a teacher who gave me a journal to write my stories in since the journal we were supposed to be keeping caused all kinds of issues at school and home. i'm the original "to think it could happen on mulberry street!" kid. why did you invent a guy to tell her to dump you? the back story to that has to be interesting!
Yeah, it actually got me in trouble... long story, but it ended with me reading someone else's mail, thinking it was addressed to my altar ego. The letters that I sent her, with words cut out from magazines, would have been creepy if she hadn't noticed the bright yellow paper I pasted them onto was paper that I had in my dorm room. We still have the letters. When I, on a rare occasion, show them to a friend while we're telling this saga, the friend is always a little aghast at the whole concept. But back then, before stalkers became regular news, it just was quirky fun.
That was a powerful story and a good play on the damage that lies can do in one's real life.
You are a wise person!!
Enjoyed reading it – Grounded for a month was a bit strong though, I think.
Ouch! That was an amazing feat, especially for a fifth-grader. You’re crazy creative!
Gee, you had such a creative & imaginative mind!
@Stanelle - comes from countless bad choices!
@rojobe - a month was nothing! once i was grounded until my earth science teacher would write a letter saying i was improving and he wouldn't write bc he was a jerk!
@athanasius2k4 - i had a hard time telling reality and truth from my imagination as a kid. it couldn't have been fun parenting a kid like me. my parents were always having to clean up my messes! plus- i believed the oddest things!
@icapillas - learning to channel all that creativity and imagination was very difficult!
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