i put sh*t in my crush's mailbox

also a very tragic thing happened.

I once left dog shit in my crush’s mailbox. I walked the family dog until she did her business, continued up the street to his house, sat the baggy inside the mailbox, turned around and went home.

You have questions, sure. The first one is probably why did you do that, Erin. The answer is that I loved him, obviously, and I thought this would make him finally reciprocate my feelings. I thought he, too, had seen Billy Madison so many times he could recite it by heart. I thought he would see the bagged dog shit and think of the old man in his underwear yelling, “It’s poop again!” and laugh laugh laugh, taken with my cleverness. Did my crush, age nine, even check the fucking mailbox? And if my nine year old crush had strolled down the driveway that afternoon in his loafers and housecoat and checked the mailbox, would he have seen the shit and known, intuitively, that it was from me? 

Listen, I was in fourth grade. I did not know how to woo a boy, nor did I, apparently, possess basic logic or critical thinking skills. I did, however, possess a stunningly backward sense of what it meant to show affection.