The Best Time I Sent a Boy Flowers

by Kandy Harris

I had a crush on Jason when I was in the seventh grade. He was a tall, blonde, barrel-chested eighth grader, and he seemed so manly to me with his penny loafers and Bugle Boy jeans. I, on the other hand, was overweight, wore thick, Coke-bottle glasses, and was extremely socially awkward.

Crushing on Jasons was kind of my thing back in junior high, which was convenient, because I never had to change the “I [heart] Jason” I had written on every available surface to some other name a week later. There was Jason the skater-punk, Jason the jock, Jason the other skater-punk who was friends with the first Jason, and Jason the Mormon. But the aforementioned tall, blonde Jason was different. He actually knew my name and would say hi to me in the hallway.

I’m not sure where I came up with the idea to send Jason flowers. I do remember running it past a friend of mine, who said, “WOW! That’s such a great idea! He’s going to fall in love with you, I just know it. How are you going to do it?”

This was where my adolescent brilliance truly kicked in. “I’m going to buy flowers and put an anonymous note on them, and then the classroom messenger will deliver them to his first period classroom.”

We squealed and jumped up and down at the sheer deliciousness of such a cliché romantic teen movie plan, because that’s what 13-year-old girls do.

The day of delivery finally arrived, and I discreetly dropped the two red roses I bought at the Carrs Quality Center Grocery floral department at the front office with a note that said, “Please have morning class messenger deliver to Jason _______, room [suchnsuch].” And so she did.

The hallways were all a-flutter after first period. Jason was extremely popular, so the mystery of who sent him roses spread quickly throughout our little Alaskan junior high school. Theories were discussed during lunch. Bets were placed on busses. I, however, remained silent. Only my one friend and I knew the truth.

I decided to tell Jason during the spring formal dance. For the occasion, I picked out a pastel floral number with substantial shoulder padding and a ruffled skirt, and I sprayed my bangs extra high in hopes that what I lacked in attractiveness could be made up for with sheer hair height. It should come as no surprise that I didn’t have a date to this dance, or any other dance I went to until I was a junior in high school, but I didn’t care that night. My excitement for the Big Reveal was too overwhelming, but I waited until after the dance was over to tell Jason the news, thereby ensuring that we would ride off together into the sunset straight from the junior high cafeteria.

After the dance had ended, I followed Jason out of the cafeteria and into the school. Naturally, he was not alone.

“Jason,” I shyly said as I approached him and his crowd of friends. “Could I talk to you alone for a second?”

“Sure,” he replied, and we walked down the hallway.

“Remember those flowers you got in first period a while ago?”

“Yes…”

“I sent them to you,” I blurted a little too loudly, and the sound of my voice seemed to ricochet off the hard tile floors and green lockers. All of the blood in my body was in my face.

“Oh. Wow,” Jason stammered. “Wow. That’s … wow. Thank you so much. Um … walk with me back in this direction,” he said, and he began to walk towards his group of friends.

This is great, I thought to myself. He wants to introduce me to his friends. He wants to introduce the new love of his life, a.k.a. ME!! to his friends! But when we got back to his group, he turned his back on me and resumed conversation like I wasn’t even there. In spite of my social cluelessness, it only took a second for me to realize what was going on. Jason was blowing me off. He was too immature to tell me thanks but no thanks, and too much of a jackass to at least give me the old, “Hey, let’s be pals” send-off. Instead, he simply (and literally) turned his back on me until I slinked off toward the nearest payphone so I could call my parents to come and pick me up.

And that was that. No massive fallout after the Big Reveal. I simply returned to school on Monday morning just the same as before, although sheepishly and perhaps a little wiser in the ways of teenaged boys. None of this would matter anyway, because in a couple of months, I would forget to wear a bra on a day we had gym class, giving everyone the opportunity to forget about the Jason/flowers incident and have a good laugh at my quickly developing floppy fat-teenager boobies. And in my small world, that was the very definition of “bouncing back.”

Kandy Harris is probably rotting away in a cubicle right at this very moment. When she’s not, she’s most likely singing, writing, filming comedy sketches, or trying to convince her nine-year-old daughter to do homework.