Introducing “Mitch” – 332.5

Wow! She is really writing again?

I know I have been wildly inconsistent with my writing frequency, but I feel compelled to finish up this romantic history. I’m sure it is partly due to my leaving for a month next week, and I desire to catch up on other topics, but also I hope I am getting closer to moving on, and I have to work out my past before I can have a future.

You may remember from Shawn that my plan was always to get married when I was twenty, which obviously did not happen. I’m glad though, because I would have chosen Aaron at the time, and that would have been a very bad choice. However, it was also at that age when I fell for Mitch, which maybe could have been okay, except everything was so improbable. Seriously, I fell for his picture.

I got a press book for the football team so I could sketch faces, and maybe do some sort of artwork commemorating them. That never ended up happening, but I do still have the two basketball murals if anyone ever wants to see them. I did go through and sketch all of the football players—I just never went beyond that. Anyway, I went to get it at the offices outside Autzen Stadium, and started flipping through it at the bus stop. Before the bus even came I saw his picture (he’s early in the alphabet), and his face struck me and I could not get him out of my mind.

I felt at the time that it was ridiculous. It was just a picture, and I hoped I was not that shallow, and I didn’t even know him. All the same, I could not stop thinking about him.

This was in January, and at the next basketball game I was sitting alone, and suddenly he was there looking for a seat. I scooted over, which I would have done for anyone, and (making eye contact) he thanked me and sat down next to me. A moment later someone he knew made a place for him and he moved, but I was worse off than ever, and I felt like I needed to shake this insanity off. It probably wasn’t the best technique, but I tried to do this by writing him an anonymous note telling him that he was hot. It may not have been quite as stupid as it sounds, but it was plenty stupid.

Also, it did not work. I was still thinking about him constantly. I even ended up confessing to two of my friends, Sid and Jack, one night when we were out walking. The great part of this was that Jack knew him. Mitch was dating a girl in his dorm or something. So Jack was trying to tell me this, but I was trying to finish my story, so he started shouting “I know (first name, last name) down alongside Sacred Heart Hospital. The streets were fairly deserted, so I don’t think that ended up being a big deal. If you are wondering if confession helped cool the fever, it did not.

The last Saturday home game in January is the one where they announce the athletic honor roll. That happened, and Mitch made it. I was caught off guard. For any one else who made it, I would have made a point of congratulating them when I saw them, and I did congratulate the others. Before the note, this would have been a good way of getting to meet him. After the note, I was sure he would see right through me. I didn’t think I could do it. Maybe my problem was that I was trying too hard not to think of the polar bear, and so I could not stop thinking about the polar bear. The way to beat that is to consciously choose something else to think about, but I didn’t. He was everywhere.

The next place he turned up was in the student union (Erv Memorial Union, or EMU) one night. They were having an acoustic night, and my friend John’s band, Something She Said, was going to be doing a set. I was there to support them, but during the previous set, Mitch appeared. And he kept looking at me. We were kind of doing that thing where one person looks, and the other person sees and looks away, except he wasn’t looking away so much so I was constantly being caught. I guess it’s nice that one of us wasn’t embarrassed.

Finally he left, and I needed to stay and wait for my friends. They came on and played, and things wrapped up, and we visited a bit, and I wondered the whole time about opportunities missed. I decided I would do one sweep of the building. If I saw him, I would go up and congratulate him, and if not, it just wasn’t meant to be.

I did find him at the study tables. I thought I could go up inconspicuously, but he looked up and watched me the entire time. Perhaps I should have had the presence of mind to keep going like it was all a coincidence, but I doubt it would have fooled him anyway. So, I got up there, said my piece, and he asked me my name. Well, I wasn’t expecting that. Then he introduced himself, although, I obviously knew his identity, but he had really good manners. We shook hands too. I explained a little bit about my strange booster habits, and he, in reference to the honor roll, talked about setting goals and going after them, and it was kind of great, except that I was still nervous and trying to get away when this was a time to get in deep. It might have been really good to find out that we both had our sights set on the entertainment industry then. I probably left too soon.

It still changed things, because now that he knew me, whenever we saw each other (which was not often enough) he would stop and talk. It pretty much always happened at EMU, and if started always cutting through EMU instead of going around it, well, lots of people cut through it. It was the center of things.

That focus on goals that he had talked about seemed to be a focus on people too. When we were talking, I felt like I had his complete attention, and I believe he did that with other people too. I also felt like there was electricity flowing between us, and I did not feel that with anyone else.

This was a relatively good time, but it didn’t last for long. In May, a series of events made me realize that I needed to go on a mission. I was going to finish spring term, and then work to save money until I turned twenty-one the following January. I felt good about it, but one thing that weighed is that by the time I returned to school Mitch would have graduated, and I wouldn’t see him again. In addition, I started to feel guilty about the note, like I was being sneaky, and that maybe I needed to confess.

One day in May as the end of the school year was coming, I was cutting through EMU, and he was studying at a table alone. We greeted each other, but I was continuing to walk by, and then I turned and sat down and said, “Actually, I need to tell you something.”

Now, when I am nervous, I will talk a lot, and quite quickly, to get past the dangerous area. It was how I told my father I was going, and it was how I told Mitch about the note, and then explained that I was telling him because I was leaving, and why. When I let him get a word in edgewise, he started asking about the mission, and so we didn’t really talk about the attraction or whether it was mutual. I would never have believed that it could have been mutual, though, so I was not considering that as a possibility.

It was embarrassing, but I figured that I had a clean conscience now, and anyway, it was done. The next week was dead week, then finals week, and then I would be gone until he left, so clearly I was never going to see him again. Except I saw him more over those two weeks than I had over all the rest of the two terms.

Now, he certainly had every right to view me as the world’s biggest dork, but he was still wonderful each time we met, and the electricity still flowed. I suppose that’s why I could not really get over him. It’s so easy to break an attraction to a jerk, but kind attentive guys are something else.

I did send him a note once over the summer, and I called once, for no good reason, and he called back, but the electricity did not flow over the phone, and it just left me feeling stupid, or vulnerable. I guess if I had just said, hey, “I know I said it was just that I thought you were attractive, but actually I feel like I love you, so what do you say to that?” we could have reached some resolution, but I did not know what to say. It was not logical that I could love him with our handful of experience together, and it was impossible that he would love me, so I could never fully commit.

I did see him one last time. I went down to one more game with the Johnsons. It was a Saturday night. The next day I would be set apart, then Monday I would fly to Salt Lake to spend two days with some friends we had who were serving as senior missionaries at the genealogical library, and then Wednesday I was reporting to the Missionary Training Center. Still, I wanted one last game.

So we went, and it was the athletic honor roll again, and he had made it again, so I saw him. I just wanted to talk to him, so the minute the game ended I posted myself at this pole where I could see the two main exits, and I was going to spot him, and as everyone poured out he never appeared. As the halls emptied, my heart sunk, and I headed to the Oregon locker room to meet up with the family again. And on my way there I found Mitch outside the visitor’s locker room, waiting for a friend.

We chatted for a moment, and then I needed to go, but he said to look him up when I got back. I said, “But you’ll be gone.” He said that you never know. He might still be around. He was still just refusing to leave my heart, whether I would ever admit his actual place in it to him or not.