Several weeks ago, I picked up our six year old from his fourth day of first grade. On the ride home he informed me that he had "a crush" on one of his schoolmates. "She has brown hair and blue eyes and she looks kinda shy, but she isn't."

Okay. I am just beginning to deal with the fact that he is gone from 7:45 in the morning until 3:45 in the afternoon. That he eats "hot lunch" in the school cafeteria rather than peanut butter and jelly 'samwitches' with me at home.

That he barely turns to give me the sign language 'I love you' we've shared since I dropped him off for his first day of preschool three years ago. And now this? A crush? Six years old seems so young.

But I remember my first crush. Do you?

I was in Miss Keoff's first grade class at Sunny Slope Elementary. (By fifth grade it was snidely referred to as "Runny Slop Penitentiary" but I digress....) The year was 1974.

His name was John Quarry. He was everything my seven year old heart could desire. Dark hair. Brown eyes. He didn't pull my braids during reading group like Kevin Putler. He even brought his pet alligator to Show-n-Tell*.

I wonder what John Quarry is up to these days. I'm fairly certain if he's still using the line, "Hey, I've got a pet alligator! Wanna see it?" on the ladies, he has been slapped more often than Don Imus at a NAACP convention.

My husband tells me his first crush was on a cute little blonde girl named Melinda Koch. She was the ring leader of a group that chased him behind the bus barn at school one afternoon and took turns holding him down and kissing him.

He often wished for a repeat performance of such an act by the pretty coeds during his college days but alas, it was never to be. One apparently is allowed to be "gang-kissed" by some Iowa Dutch girls only once during one's life. This does, however, seem to explain his penchant for the color yellow and his love of certain Benny Hill videos.

I emailed some photos from Spencer's first day to friends and family around the globe and of course, I mentioned The Crush. And I asked everyone if they remembered their first crush.

My best friend from high school,Brian, wrote back as follows:

First-grade crush was Sherryl.She had hair down to her butt and a pretty smile other than the missing teeth. I wrote her a note one day on an orange piece of construction paper, and asked her to be my girlfriend.She read the note, looked at me and shook her head "No."

During our junior year of high school, I told her the story (which she didn't remember), then told her because of her rejection I had turned gay. Her eyes went wide in horror until I started laughing. Serves her right.

Oh, how did ol' Georgie and Ira Gershwin put it? '"The world will pardon my mush, 'cause I've got a crush, my baby, on you."

Today, our fickle little fella emphatically informed me, "I am in LOVE with Sarah! I want to kiss her a million times!"

A new crush. And this time he says it's 'love'.

I need a drink.

*Back in the Disco Decade, not only were we kiddos encouraged to play on metal equipment and hard asphalt at recess but we were also allowed to have pets that would later be able to possibly devour us.

Gigi Grabow's mom chain-smoked in the car with the windows up during her rotation at carpool. Another friend's mother used to let us have sips from her red and white can of Schiltz while her daughter and I teetered around in the kitchen in her precariously high, cork-heeled Candies.

(I never did develop a taste for watery beer, but I do admit to a predilection for sky-scraping heels. Go figure.)