To: Mr. Anonymous Sitting in the Last Chair on the Third Row to the Left

I was thinking of you a lot today…
And, seriously, why must you be so damn perfect?
Why do I have to look at you and question my morals?
There was that awkward moment last week…you probably don’t remember it, but I do… the prof was passing out the tests and I turned around to get my binder and you smiled at me. So I smiled back. And, as soon as it was there, it was gone.
That was a moment, and I took it in.
I saw the gold flecks in your brown eyes.
I found myself thinking about you all during class.
The sound of the prof’s mutterings on about Milton’s Paradise Lost didn’t seem relevant in the least to anything anymore… I didn’t care about Heaven, and I didn’t care about Hell anymore. You took up the majority of my mind, while a vision of a little house on the coast of Ireland took up the rest.
A little cottage, right there, on the coast.
And whose is it?
It’s ours.
Why am I thinking this?
Am I a complete idiot?!
But I see it so clearly!
I see it, right there, in front of my mind like a movie projected on a giant screen:
There’s the little cottage, nestled sweetly beside a cliff, white-washes with a little garden along the side. The cliff plummets right down to the ocean, the green grass sliding off the edge as if it is ready to spread wings and fly. There is a whistle in the wind, carried up from the foaming surf below, which rises up and down and slaps and splashes.
And I am standing on the cliff, looking out into the eternal vastness of the ocean. The sun is dipping slowly downward; the sky is pale colors, like dishwater from a paintbrush. I am wearing a white dress, with bare feet, a shawl wrapped about my shoulders. My hair is fluttering behind me like fine strands of gold.
You are there, watching me cautiously from the window of the cottage.
I turn back, I see you, and I smile.
But class is over…
And you’re backing up your books as hurriedly as you can, to get out of class before you expire of boredom.
No, no, wait!
Wait, I want to talk to you!
But it’s no use…
My mouth can’t motion the words.
So I just raise, gently, the last to leave the room…
I mutter a sweet word or two to the old prof who, for all of his efforts, couldn’t manage to entertain my mind, or pull it away from you.
I take my leave.
The ovation is gone.

Disney Channel & the “Tween Exploitation” Problem

Is it just me, or does every other female child star that comes out of Disney Channel turned into a rehab-center regular/promiscuous scalawag?