Forrest

Prepare yourself for a crazy story.

This morning when I woke up, I looked at my phone and the first thing I thought when I saw the date was, "Today is Forrest MacSparran's birthday." In 3rd grade, I had a major crush on this boy. The only problem was that all the other girls were in love with him too, since he was hands down the cutest boy around, so my chances didn't look so great. Within a few months, however, he shyly admitted that he had a crush on me and then threw himself down the playground slide to hide from my reaction. Well, with that information, we started exchanging love notes. They went something like this:

Dear Robyn/Forrest,
Hi. How are you? I hope you are having a good day at school today.
Love,
Forrest/Robyn
p.s. I love you! :)

Now that is some pretty exciting information right there. I was sure that love meant playing kickball together at recess, writing these substantial love letters, and making all the other girls jealous. I was also pretty certain it was true love because our birthdays were so close together. Third grade was a good year.
Forrest moved halfway through our fourth grade year, and I haven't seen him or heard from him since, but sometimes on October 18th I think about those memories with fondness. Today I decided to look him up on Facebook, just for kicks, but nothing came up. I was certain I'd spelled his name right (even in third grade, who can misspell their true love's name?). I googled his name and the first thing that came up was a link to his obituary.

Whoa. What else is there to say? Death seems like something to worry about when youth has long since slipped away, not when you're 15 or 21. Life is fragile.