It also brings a fond memory of a boy who I thought I was in love with. I was in 5th grade when I met him. Actually I was assigned to sit next to him as punishment for disrupting the class. It wasn't me who was causing the problem, it was my desk. My desk had a few loose screws and sometimes it would collapse with the slightest bump. It was out of my control, but my teacher didn't care about that and to teach me a lesson he made me sit next to a boy. I didn't see the connection between my crime and the punishment. We were 10 years old and very aware of the possibility of catching cooties. Nobody wanted to sit with the opposite sex. I was humiliated by this arrangement.
But I was pleasantly surprised. He was different than all the boys that I met before. He was kind, generous, and well liked by others. I never saw him being mean to other kids. He was easy going and fun to talk to. He was the captain of our soccer team and our class president.
He was everything that I wasn't. We'd just moved to the city a year ago after my dad went to the hospital with black lung disease. My mom had six kids and had no money. It has been a hard year for me. I got bullied by other kids because I was new and we were poor. When I did get good marks on my test they accused me of cheating. I don't remember anyone ever saying anything nice to me in that year. Very soon I came up with excuses to skip school. I found out that faking a stomach ache worked pretty well.
This boy and I became good friends. We talked all the time and started causing real disruptions in our classroom. My teacher had to reassign our seats again because we were too talkative. I thought about him a lot during that time and came to the conclusion that I was in love with him. I even wrote a note confessing my love which I never gave to him.
One spring day he handed me acacia flowers. He told me that he climbed a tree to pick them for me. He was the first person ever to give me flowers. I remember standing there looking at the flowers with the warm feeling that knowing someone cares enough to climb a tree to pick flowers for me.
After that school year we moved to a different city again and I never heard anything about him. Was it love? I think that thought never even entered his mind. He was just being a decent person. But to me it was love. It was love that sustained me when I was lost. Even after 40 years I still think of him when I see acacia flowers.
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