The second day of second semester freshman year, I went to my freshman honors seminar and found myself sitting across from the most gorgeous guy I'd ever seen. His name was Ryan. Around lunchtime I was sitting in the computer lab in my dorm with my friend Allyson, telling her all about this gorgeous guy I met in class when lo and behold, guess who sent me a BITNET message! (BITNET was kind of the precursor to instant messaging...that's the easiest way to explain it.) Unfortunately, he ended up dropping the class but it turned out that he lived in the same dorm as I did, so we saw each other around quite a bit and got to be pretty good friends.
There was always tons of chemistry between us...but we never dated. In fact, he dated what seemed like every female from the Chicago area who was in the journalism school...except for me. I gave him a hard time about it more than once.
And when he had a problem with these women, guess who he'd come running to for advice? He'd be sitting there telling me his latest tale of woe and I'd be the understanding friend...but inside I was like
, wanting to scream "HEY! YOU IDIOT! I'VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH YOU FOR YEARS AND I'D NEVER TREAT YOU LIKE THAT!" I never did, though.
We lost touch when I left IU the first time around. I think he is married now.