i remember the boy

I was chatting with an old friend earlier today, and she mentioned that John was back in the old town.

"Really?" I said. "What is he doing now?"

John is married, with two kids. He sells snacks in the canteen of the local public school.

John was one of my boardmates in the months after my college graduation. He was also my first love.

He was the local heartthrob and I was a nerd. It didn't help that I was studying in Manila and he was in the province, but when you're 14 you think that love like that can last forever. I'd go home whenever my allowance would allow me, then sigh over him. He was the sole topic in about six of my teenage diaries.

But John was never my boyfriend (a fact that my husband would not probably believe). I guess that was why he stayed my crush for about eight years, because he was the one person I could not have, and I despaired over that fact for a long time, but I never really understood why.

Now I work in a bank, buy shoes every two weeks, and studies MBA. I have a husband who does not blink when I wanted to buy a laptop after lunch, although he doesn't know about the shoes. :-)

Hearing about John, I now think, what would I have been had I become his wife? An employee in the local cooperative who sells Avon cosmetics during lunch break?

No, I don't gloat over his present state. It's just that in the heart of every woman (and man) who had once loved and been heartbroken, a small part will always wonder about a past love, where the person is, what he is doing. And perhaps, when they meet again, there will be a little spark, a little racing of the pulse, in remembering what you once had.

For some, there will be nothing. And still for some, it's "How the heck did I fall in love with him?!"