The teenage boys who are in line in front of me at Panera Bread order entirely way too much food.
I listen to the first boy ask for a macaroni and cheese bread bowl, followed by a bowl of of tomato soup with a baguette, a full sized steak panini, a cookie, and a large soda to go with it.
His friend steps up to the plate and says, “I’ll have the same thing.”
“No, dude, you don’t like tomato soup, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, what should I get?”
“I dunno dude, pick something.”
It’s Panera Bread.
It’s a place where certain types of people have an extremely hard time just picking something.
I sit in a booth with my back to them.
I eat my soup and sandwich and listen to them banter quietly, but I start paying much more attention when I hear one of their voices going monotone.
They are no longer talking to each other, one is reading something aloud to his friend.
I catch snippets of what he says:
“You’re a senior, you’re seventeen, you’re going to be graduating in three months and then going off to college after summer, and I can’t follow you…
I love you but I feel like I am only holding you back, and I don’t think we should be together anymore anyway, I know people make fun of you for dating me, so maybe it would be better if we just ended it now…
I know you think this isn’t serious, but I love you, and I don’t know how I’m going to be able to look at you again after you read this…”
And then I hear the boys laughing, which, sadly, doesn’t surprise me.
“Dude, what are you going to say to her?”
“I don’t know, should I just write back now and say ‘yeah, let’s break up’ or should I let her think I’m thinking about it for a little while?”
Soup boy laughs.
“I don’t even know how I’m going to be able to look at you again,” he laughs, mocking her.
“Maybe she’ll stop coming to school and we won’t have to see each other.”
“In your dreams, man.”
…
I want to stand up and say something to these boys.
I want to say:
You may laugh now, but you don’t know.
You might never have anyone love you like that ever again.
That girl who you’re laughing at, whose heart you’re going to break, she might be the one if you were strong enough to give her a chance.
You might not have a chance like this again.
Yes, it seems like a bit too much drama in the Panera Bread, but maybe this boy really needs to have it.
You don’t know the depth and breadth of this girl’s heart.
You clearly don’t know the truth of her teenage love for you — and that’s something special, boy.
For one brief moment, I had the urge to stand up to a teenage boy in Panera Bread.
But of course, I didn’t. And the moment passed.
I don’t know if, or how he decided to break his girlfriend’s heart, because now I can only know the sting of my own first, teenage love.
I only know my own first heartbreak under the flickering parking lot lights as the autumn sun began to set.
Are you sure this is how you want to spend your senior year? I asked him.
It wasn’t…
…
For some reason, I am a love at first sight kind of gal.
It’s happened to me multiple times in life and it happened for the first time when I was fourteen, with Jeremy.
I know, you can laugh, I’m still thinking about my first love at fourteen, but that is how it all begins, and isn’t that what we sort of base our relationships off of for the rest of our lives?
I saw him that first day of band camp (we both played the tuba, not kidding) and knew that I wanted him to be mine.
Sometimes miracles do happen, and we started dating when I was a freshman and he was a junior.
We weren’t very advanced as a couple, we never had sex or even any sexual relations besides making out and some ‘heavy petting’ but I was in love with him, no doubt.
I thought about him every moment of the day, my heart ached when we were apart, and I lived constantly with a lump in my throat, always afraid that it would end.
…
He didn’t want to be ‘tied down’ his senior year of high school.
You see, Jeremy had grown attractive to other girls, probably because they could see what a great boyfriend he was to me, and he got bored.
And because he was a teenage boy, he just came right out and told me that before band practice one night, and I was shattered.
I ran off with two of my girlfriends and hid behind the school crying, and all three of us got in trouble for ditching practice, but it didn’t matter, because my first boyfriend, my first love had just broken up with me and the world was over.
Which makes me believe it’s stupid to have your first love in high school.
Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it can’t be avoided.
Love at first sight, and all that.
But really, high school is the worst time to be trying to figure out relationships and how to really love someone.
We aren’t mature enough yet to know or understand what the other person needs, and we aren’t mature enough yet to hold their hearts so preciously in our hands.
The delicate business of real love should come later, in college or beyond, at least when we’re old enough to buy alcohol, right?
Because love is dangerous, and hearts are fragile.
And high school boys can be callous and dumb.
If your first love was a high school love, did you live through it with your heart intact?
…
Thank you for reading. I’d love it if you would follow me on Twitter and also here on Medium to keep in touch. 🙂
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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