Sandra Lovato

When I was 12, I had a crush on Sandra Lovato. In the backs of the comic books and the Boy's Life's, the prize I coveted most for selling seeds was the bugle. I thought it would be cool to blow reveille out the back door in her honor before going to school each day. I never said nuthin' to her. No, I don't mean about the bugle - I mean nuthin.' Then we broke up.

Here's my ritual: when I officially fell in love with her (after thinking about it after the first day of 7th grade, in the garage loft where I and my brother and sister always slept, and thinking that yeah, I could love this girl), I wrote her name on a small scrap of paper - or maybe it was mushier, like Scott & Sandra or something. I then tore it into small pieces and wrapped the pieces up in another small piece of paper and enclosed it in masking tape while attaching it to a cotton string which I wore around my neck (waking, sleeping or taking a bath) for most of the 7th grade. Then one day in Spring, with a bunch of guys playing softball during gym, feeling comradery with them, and macho, I decided I'd had enough of this relationship and I told them so. So that was it - no more crush and after school, up in the ditch behind the garage, I performed the closing ceremony: unwrap the shredded note, glue it all back together and burn the whole thing. Boy - and my sister-in-law said I wasn't romantic. Huh.

There is a place on Mt. Timpanogos near the saddle (ridge) just below the summit where you can kind of make your way off the trail and over to a spring and some small cliffs. One day, while I was still in this relationship, I pulled one of the square rocks (formed by freezing and thawing?) out from the cliff and wrote on the part that would be inside when I put it back, some other mushy note about Sandra, like maybe her name and maybe mine. And stuck it back in.