My 24 Hour Crush

Last weekend, I was hit hard by the most violent crush I’ve ever experienced in my lifetime. This crush included sudden uncontrollable muscle spasms and a complete lack of productivity at work that caused me to miscode nearly every file I touched. I know that most people consider crushes to be an elementary distraction, but I take my crushes very seriously. I love how they awaken emotions that come so few and far between, and help me forget the nauseating pains of relationships past.

It is truth universally acknowledged that there are three types of crushes. First you have the celebrity crush, which is always a lot of fun to gossip about and to which there are entire magazines devoted. However, to succeed in obtaining a celebrity crush is as probable as winning the lottery, so I think it’s one of the most frustrating types to have. Second, we have the secret crush that you may have on a friend or associate, but you never confess it because you’re too afraid of rejection. These crushes are painful because they could last for years and may never be resolved. My advice on these is just to get it out in the open because all that beating around the bush in maddening. Finally we have my personal favorite, the stranger crush, which I frequently have on complete strangers walking down the street for inexplicable reasons. What’s amazing about stranger crushes is that the attraction is almost instantaneous but very fleeting, so you get all the excitement of an new intrigue without actually dealing with any of the relationship drama.

Normally, my stranger crushes last only a few hours, coming and going just as quickly as the image of the person fades from my mind. However, last week there was one particular gentleman who stayed in my thoughts for a full 24 hours. That has to be some type of record in Kendra crush time. I saw him at a writing seminar last week and was instantly charmed. He had a way of seeing the world and talking about his writing that was so refreshing and so sincere that I couldn’t stop thinking about him the rest of the day, repeating his words over and over again in my head. Even though I’m almost certain that I will never see him again, I will happily store him away in my cluttered crush closet perhaps using him as a muse for a short story or two.

It is always such an expected gift to feel such an inspiring connection to another human being, because so often I find myself so tightly wrapped up in my own thoughts that I fail to see all the lovely possibilities that are right in front of me. So, I just have to thank all of my stranger crushes, from the security guard at the library, to my waiter at Waffle House for the small roles that you’ve played in my life, inspiring emotions and fantasies that would otherwise lay dormant.