Megan Nicol Reed: What happens when you see your teenage crush

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Why, I cursed. Oh why hadn't I taken the time to put on some makeup? Nothing too full-on. I was only walking the dog after all. But some foundation, a little blush, a swipe of mascara; the bare minimum required these days to keep me from looking as if I am infirm. At the very least, surely, I could have brushed my hair. Worn my best trackies, or even my second-best, anything other than the ones I had pulled on in haste that morning. The ones that make me look as if I could quite possibly be wearing adult diapers.

It wasn't as if he was all that flash himself. No less grey or lined than me. Wearing those overly wholesome pants, the kind that zip off at the knee and — ta-dah! — you're wearing shorts. Not to mention several bracelets more than I have ever found attractive on a man. And yet as soon as I clapped eyes on him, coming down the street toward me, having neither seen nor heard of him in close to 25 years, I was transported. To my teenage self, who had so assiduously watered and fertilised such a hopelessly unreciprocated crush for all those painfully loveless years.

We spoke briefly, and I both wanted the conversation to end as quickly as possible and for it to go on and on. When he smiled with the exact same thrilling cockiness he had at 13, all the men whose hearts I had broken in the interim, those who had broken mine, even my darling husband, all were momentarily dashed from my mind. And I was again that girl, so greedy, so grateful, for his slightest attention.

A counsellor my husband and I see sometimes, when we are veering off track, clashing in a million minuscule, miserable ways, says that everybody feels an emotion and then their past latches on to it, so that the way anyone experiences anything will always be framed by their particular backstory.

Oh yeah, I thought at first, but the more I ponder it, the more I see the wisdom. To paint the simplest of pictures: take an adult who was cherished as a child and an adult who was beaten, now put them in an situation where someone in a position of authority is behaving aggressively toward them; both will feel fear, but while one will be able to rationalise it, the other will be crippled by it.

I spent the afternoon after crossing paths with the former object of my affections feeling oddly unsettled, finding myself wanting in ways I frequently did in my youth but seldom do amid the contentment of middle age. Even though I was lucky enough to find happiness with a man who returns my love and lust, for a moment or two I was again reduced. If he didn't fancy me, then patently no one else ever would either.

A few nights later I was at a party for a friend's older sister, temporarily home from overseas. It was lovely to see so many dear faces from my past.

Several people said very kind things to me; that they always knew I would be the writer I had so desperately wanted to be. Hovering over the cheeseboard, suffused with the pleasure of their compliments, I turned to the evening's honorary guest. It took me a moment to realise the sensibly dressed woman she was talking to was the too-cool-
for-school-girl I'd always been in awe of. "Do you remember, Megan?" said my friend. "She …" and before she could finish, I leapt in. "Oh, she wouldn't remember me," I said. "I'm just your little sister's dorky mate."

Following on

Simon says it's useful, or at least interesting, to consider the subject of children's capacity for deviousness from an evolutionary perspective. "Children are not designed to make happy families and outside relationships. Their job is to learn the art of politics, how best to marshal people and resources to their wider and personal self-interest and survival. I'd prefer it if my own kids turned out to be lovely people (which would make them better than me). But I don't insist. Nor do I really feel responsible. Who am I to try to lay down a best course of how to be when Nature has already instilled a highly successful genetic paradigm?"