While watching a special on when you know you're in love on Oxygen today (I swear I only watched it because Dandy Warhols were on next) hosts and audience members alike spoke on topics such as, "how do you know you're in love?" and "who falls in love faster, men or women?" The answers pissed me off. It was one of those few times where you want to scream responses back at the TV. Maybe it's different in cities with a population more than twice that of your entire state, but the responses were tremendously different than I expected.

"Can guys and girls be just friends?" Yes! Yes, yes, yes!!! If I've survived for the past 19 years, you can too!

"Can you be friends after a breakup?" Yes! But it is difficult, tense, and I don't think I'll be able to do it.

Lastly, "how do you know you're in love?" I've only been in love once, and it just sort of happened. I can pinpoint the exact moment I fell in love with her.

On a Thursday, I had asked out Tweety, and found out two days later that she was involved with my best friend. The same guy who tried to fight me in 8th grade, and signed my yearbook with "Fuck you." Yep, he even shoved me after I offered relationship advice while he dated Britt for a short time at the end of 10th grade. He's who I associate Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time" with. No one listened but I was right about it all. They broke up shortly after. T.E.N.T was the only person who supported me during this time.

A year later, the day after asking out Tweety, T.E.N.T, Sariah, Britt, Martha and I went swing dancing. I was the only guy amongst the four girls, and it was here I began to develop an attraction toward T.E.N.T. Her recent hair cut and attitude change changed everything. Time after time, (damn Cyndi Lauper song) she jumped and ran into my arms as I caught her, flipped her, and spun her close to me. By the end of the night, I was exhausted. I had caught her at least two dozen times.

On the drive home, we were the only two in my car. It was at this time I honestly fell in love. It was sometime between leaving the dance club and her friend Malinda's house (who ironically lived by Danny, the former best friend) that it happened. I remember litle of what she said, but it was different than anything she had ever said before.

There was a light rain and fog that night. Maybe there wasn't. Maybe it was a physical haze I saw as we waited on an abandoned street at a train crossing.

By Monday, I was hooked on her. Two weeks later she asked me to senior prom as she lay on the concrete outside of school at lunch. Although it was the day before the dance, I was all set to go with her. But as I walked up the stairs after lunch, I realized I had a camping trip scheduled, and that I wouldn't be able to go.

She, Kaylinn, Sariah and Britt didn't believe me. "Cancel it!" they said, but as the trip was the next morning, it was far too late. The entire way home I began to feel that maybe T.E.N.T. had even the slightest of crushes on me. The camping trip was terrible, other than the fact I was able to see Usher selling hot dogs on the set of Touched By An Angel.

And it's hard to fall out of love. She's hurt me like no other, but I swear there is something about her that guys can not only not resist, but can't leave either. Once you have a crush on her, you're hooked for life. She isn't beautiful, she isn't polite, she gets nervous easily, she isn't one you'd initially put on a pedestal. But maybe that's what makes her so attractive, and what makes her so hard to walk away from. It still doesn't mean that I take back every mean every word of what I wrote in a letter to her on December 26, 1999.

And I haven't fallen for a girl as hard since. Thank God I'm young and will be able to bounce back from it, but I haven't been able to since. I haven't even been able to date or trust anyone since her, which is what scares me the most. Those who knew me before and after can tell the difference. Her return in March/April of 2000 upset me so much, I even had my best friends and members of my drama cast talking behind my back. I'm sorry to them, I wasn't myself, but how sorry can I be when everyone stabbed everyone in the back equally amongst the drama kids?

Erin, you said it best when you said, "if everybody knew what everybody else said about them, nobody would be friends."

You also said, "you think it's going away, so you let your guard down, and they come back and put the whammy on you. It's like bazaar. It's like super germs."

Yes it is.

And I can't seem to wash them off.

No Alanis quote. I've already quoted a Canadian twice in the previous paragraphs.

Jason

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