I thought it had begun in third grade, but thinking back, I can remember an earlier crush.
Every summer, my dad would sign us up for the swim team. He and my mom had spent their formative years as hippy surfers on Padre Island doing what kids do, which is mostly just kick back and relax in the river of life, just watching it mosey by. My dad had always been a believer in sports. He coached high school basketball and track for a couple of years in Kingsville, the girls’ teams — I always thought that was odd.
But, the coaching job, football in high school, and a firstborn son had him dreaming of a robust, active youth he could talk about over beers, in elevators, courthouse annexes.
So, every summer, he’d sign us up, me and my sisters, for the neighborhood swim team. We lived in Northwest Park and swum on the Stingrays, a venerable aquatics organization with depth, enthusiasm, and an awesome coaching staff.
Wendy was the coach for a long time. Kayla was her assistant coach. I remember when I was five, craning my head back to take in the full figure of her six-foot plus height, too young to appreciate the length of her legs. But craning up, the sunlight creating a halo that was accentuated by her blonde hair, I could’ve sworn she was an angel.
Some people just have a certain way with kids. Not like they’re on the kids’ level, but like they don’t believe in that level. They believe that kids are on the same level, or at least that’s how you feel, and that’s how they seem. That’s how I felt. Though probably half her height, I wasn’t taking scrubby handfuls of buttercups to my coach or an angel, or even some kind of adult. I was taking them to the woman I was determined to have as my girlfriend.
My friend Josh was just as bad. We’d purposely violate some rule just so she’d come over and pay more attention to us: cheating on sit-ups, holding onto the wall instead of swimming the full length of the pool. That was our favorite trick. She’d come over in pink flip-flops and step on our fingers. We’d grin big as rats and move our hands out of the way just in time. Still makes me grin. And we’d grin then, craning back to look up at her haloed face.
I think that’s where I learned to be cute. I can remember her squatting down in yellow shorts to look me eye to eye, accepting the wilted bunch of pink buttercups, tousling my hair and saying I was so cute, thanking me profusely for the flowers. That’s the kind of person she was. She wasn’t patronizing me. She was on the level. It wasn’t hard to have a crush on her at all.
And she’d trained me. Cute gets attention. I never really thought about it, never really sought it out, practiced at home in front of the mirror, but it stayed with me: my mutant cute power. I’m not as cute anymore, mind you. Taking life’s hammer repeatedly to the upper torso for many years tends to tarnish the smile a little. You move a little slower. You’re less inclined to just be funny and make people laugh. But every once in a while, someone I don’t know very well, someone for whom I haven’t even the slightest intention of performing for, will tell me to stop being so cute.
With Kayla, it got me her attention, but I should have learned, it didn’t get me the girl.