POTSANDPAN.NET The Literary Adventures of an English Undergrad

The First

In elementary school, I used to play chess with Patryk Sikora during recess on the playground. All the other boys would be playing basketball or handball or something else that involved sweating but not Pat and I. We would sit there for our 45 minutes of recess and just think about the next 10 moves our opponent may or may not make. Occasionally, we would gather a crowd of spectators and commentators who pretended they knew what they were talking about but we didn’t care. We just wanted to finish our game so by the time we went in for lunch and the kids circled us to ask who won today, one of us would smile with pride while the other hid his face in shame.

It would be days that I smiled that I would approach Fretty, the girl with the perfect giggle and perfect hair. It would be those days that I would say hi to her the same corny way I always did when I won a game; “Hey Freddy, Freddy, Freddy Krueger. Kill anyone today?” And she would respond with the usual eye roll and say, “Yeah Jason, I killed lots of people today” which would always follow with an awkward silence. I was only 10 but I saw my fair share of romantic comedies on T.V. where awkward silence would usually follow with a confession of love. It would be in these moments of silence with Fretty that I would sometimes hope for such a confession. I thought it was obvious then that she liked me. I mean, what wasn’t there to like about me? I was good at chess, I was thin, I drank whole milk, I ate my vegetables, I was really good at the spork game, and I wasn’t like any of the other boys. I was different. If it wasn’t her confession that I was hoping for, I would be hoping for her to ask me. Ask me who won today so I could tell her I did.

She never asked.

By the end of elementary school, by the end of fifth grade, we received our yearbooks. Everyone went mad over those things, we were 10 but we put a lot of consideration into what we would write to each other. Did I want to write something like ‘I wish you the best’ or something blander so you won’t contact me in the near future like ‘See you around. Maybe.’

When I got my yearbook, the only person I wanted to sign it was Fretty. I knew that if I gave her paper and pen, she would confess her love in ink and I too would confess mine in her yearbook. Maybe she was too shy to verbalize her feelings. I mean, we were only 10 after all. I found her sitting at lunch and asked her if we could sign each other’s yearbooks. She sighed, a sigh of relief I thought – the ‘man after all these years we can finally tell each other how we feel about each other’ sigh.

She gave me hers and I gave her mine. I sat there, across from the girl I thought I would one day hold hands with, thinking hard about what I wanted to write. Before I had touched pen to paper, she already closed my yearbook and said, “Okay, I’m done.” I guess ‘I love you’ would be pretty straightforward and self explanatory. After sitting there for what seemed like eternity, I chickened out. Instead of writing what I had always dreamed of writing, I wrote:

“You’re a really great person. I’m really glad to have met you. Good luck next year.

Your Friend,
Jason Pan”

After I gave her yearbook back, I grabbed mine and took it back to my lunch table. While everyone in my class was standing in line for lunch, I opened my yearbook up to read those three simple words, “Fuck you Jason.”