Sometime between the end of high school and the beginning of today we stopped saying “I have a crush on.” I can’t remember the last time I heard it. I’m not sure if it was replaced by “I’m saying I like like him” or the very mature “you guys, I think I have feelings for her” – but somewhere, it dropped off.
I consulted my 14-year-old sister. She claims the last time she heard it was 7th grade. “So what are people saying now then?” I asked. “I can’t say it right now,” she said, “Mom’s in the room.” (Damn you Jamie Lynne Spears!)
I think this leaves us with a considerable verbal void. If not a crush, then what? I really like him? I’ve got such a thing for her? This one’s more than just a hook up? Doesn’t quite express those unreasonable first-feelings based on nothing but quick conversation and Facebook pictures.
Sure you like a crush, but not for reasons based in logic or studied evidence. It’s not “I have such a crush on him with that Roth IRA and stable family background – ugh I’m a sucker for that.” It’s dangerous intangibles – the way she makes the joke you wish you were fast enough to make, or how by the time the night is over he’s friends with the entire bar. Not quite qualities to build a life around. Non-sensible, totally hateable things like that that if you told them to your best friends, they’d laugh at you and then go home and cry themselves to sleep.
Maybe that explains where the crush went. Maybe we stopped using the terms because it’s so god damn embarrassing — because we got tired of people giving us the look of death when we said, “Oh I don’t know – I guess it’s the way he looks when he drives. Really commanding and yet comfortable but still all in charge, just totally relaxed, you know?” It’s hard to take seriously. “Oh the way he drives – you know I was really worried about his history of drug abuse and three year old kid, but I didn’t know about the driving thing. I totally see it now.”
We grew up, got burned a few times or did some burning, and somewhere between realizing all actors are dangerous all bankers are assholes, figured out the devil is in the details and the husband is in the stats. We don’t trust the crush – probably because we can’t explain it. And much like religion and/or LOST, when we don’t understand something we either ignore it or make up something that we do understand.
We don’t trust feelings we can’t make sense of. We don’t want to hear ourselves say, “I know it’s crazy, and it’s probably never going to work out, but there’s something there, and I just can’t explain it.” We, George Bush and Big Brother 8 aside, are people of logic and order. We leave inexplicable attraction to nations that take a siesta every day – they have time for that shit.
We still have crushes – regardless of what we call them. But on the whole I think we aren’t comfortable pursuing something when all we’ve got is the crush. When we can’t really define what it is that’s behind the feelings we blindly assume they’re wrong – that we’re wrong. Isn’t that just it? If the crush is the universe’s way of guiding us in some direction (stay with me, I will in no way reference that crap book The Secret) then calling its bluff is our way of out-smarting ourselves. We say to ourselves, if I can’t explain it, it must be wrong so I’m going to quit while I’m ahead. It’s logical, it just might not be correct.
I recently told someone that I had a crush. I didn’t at all mean to say it. The friend was asking questions, and I was trying to come up with logical, convincing answers and as she grew more and more confused I just said, “I don’t know – I just have a huge crush on him.”
“Oh my god,” she said, “that’s so sweet. But is that all though?”
Maybe it is.
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Maybe it’s just a midwest thing now, but I hear the term “crush” all the time. Not in the same sense that we all used it in middle school, I suppose, but it still pops up on a frequent basis.
For example, a friend has a “work crush.” He’s someone she will probably never pursue, largely because of her concern about intra-office dating. But there it is. She thinks he is adorable and “just loves the way he gets along with everyone.”
Or what about a “girl crush”? Another friend recently told me that she has a “girl crush” on Scarlett Johanssen. Being straight, she would obviously never go for Scarlett (putting aside the fact that she will probably never meet Scarlett). However, there is something charismatic about Scarlett that creates this obsession for my friend.
So, back to Jessie’s post…when did we stop using crush in the old sense of the word? When did a crush become someone that we are unrealistically attracted to and have no intent of pursuing?
We probably stopped saying we have a crush on someone right about when we stopped saying that we are “going steady” with a person we dated for longer than a month. You tell me when “Saved by the Bell” was removed from the after-school television lineup, and I’ll tell you when all of us, regardless of age, stopped saying we had crushes on people.