The Men and the Boys: Jules

Sometimes, every now and then, something happens to show you the more beautiful side of life. These lessons are not always obvious though, in fact they can be under the most cryptic disguises. Be careful because if you blink, you might miss them.

It was the beginning of the eighth grade, the first day of the last year of elementary school ever. The playground was rammed with chatty kids and adolescent hormones, and I was a 13-year old nerd.

Puberty had not been good to me. I was a year into my growth spurt, and maintained the record of tallest kid in the school. I wasn’t allowed to wear any kind of makeup and had no idea what to do with the mop on my head, my naturally curly, short, brushed out do that could’ve been the envy of all nefarious 80’s hair bands. Nor did I have any clue about things like upper lip waxing or eyebrow plucking, and went about with dark twin bushmen hiding my eyes. The final nail in the coffin was parents who’d wisely learned to budget with my growing ways, so I was stuck with ugly, too big shoes.

I started that year freshly returned from a Europe trip with Oli, knowing that even if I wasn’t the school bombshell, I did have the best tan. I also started the year still smarting from the emotional blows of Gabriel just months before, but with newfound adopted wisdom. The way I saw it, I’d gotten some hard knocks on the streets of love, but had spent an entire summer toughening up and getting him out of my system. Gabriel could never get to me again.

Just to prove to myself that I was impervious to Gabriel’s charms I sought him out on the grounds, quickly spotting the handsome devil. He was a few yards away and he wasn’t alone, talking to someone I didn’t recognize. New kids, from the looks of it. A boy. A really cute boy. And as I found out soon after, he was in our class.

He was a skater boy by the name of Jules, and his family had moved to the area just three weeks before. Jules had dark wavy hair, a mischievous grin, and quickly earned the respect of his peers by sarcastically putting the teacher in her place not five minutes into roll call. While that assured he would never be teacher’s pet, it automatically boosted him to the Uber Popular level of our class and therefore, untouchable to me. I was still squirming within the echelons of the geek squad, after all.

The first few months of the school year passed just the way I thought it would; I read a lot, studied a lot, and didn’t mix with the other kids all that much. My brush-ins with Jules were few, but he seemed nice enough. We almost never spoke, but it didn’t escape me that he never teased me or made me the brunt of jokes like the other, more beautiful kids did.

Then, for the second time in two years, the impossible happened. In seventh grade the teacher had put Gabriel next to me in the class setup, and now, in the eighth grade, the teacher sat Jules beside me. The desks in our room were arranged in three columns of pairs, and Jules and I now occupied the top right corner for the rest of the year. I may not have been cute and flirty, but reading a lot proved you always got to sit next to the cute boys.

Was I happy about this new arrangement? Yes. Did I like this boy? Yes. I dared not show it, though. If there was anything I’d learned from the year before it was that Jules never would and never could like me. I was an ugly duckling, too tall, too bookish, and the basic rules of physics dictated that popular kids never mixed with nerds. We just didn’t go together.

But that didn’t mean we couldn’t be friends on some sort of level, and sitting next to Jules everyday was a lot of fun. He was easy to talk to and a big prankster; we’d spend a lot of our time laughing about this or that. He had great music taste and got me into The Cult and Black Sabbath when the other girls in class were bopping to New Kids on the Block. We didn’t hang together at recess, but he never once ignored me or made me feel inferior.

It’s safe to say that the more I got to know him, the more I liked him.

As it turned out, Jules liked me in his own way. Our relationship, in all its early adolescent awkwardness, was put to the test. One day in the spring Jules and I were talking about something, I don’t remember what, but I do remember being reluctant to tell him because it was something I wanted kept secret. He may have been my desk buddy but he was still in the trendy crowd, and you know how they are. Any juicy tidbit from someone lesser, they tear to shreds and tease you for weeks.

He swore up and down it would stay between us, and so I caved. Unfortunately a busybody girl sitting in front of us heard me say the word “secret” and by recess, it had spread like wildfire that Jules had dirt on me.

I was prepared for this and spent that recess away from everyone else. Being alone often made things easier to manage. What I wasn’t prepared for was almost an entire class full of Jules haters, because he’d refused to dish. “I told you I would keep my promise” he said, as we went back to our desks.

“But no one’s speaking to you.”

“Who cares? Most of them are posers, anyway.”

I was astounded. Outside of Hollywood, boys like him didn’t protect girls like me. It just didn’t happen.

Things between us didn’t change after that, we still sat next to each other, talked every day, and teamed together over assignments. He was better at math and I was better at the comprehensive subjects, so we were a good match that way. I didn’t keep my hopes up that he was in love with me, but took very great comfort with the fact that we were friends. Good friends.

The rest of that year passed quickly and before I knew it, we were on the verge of high school. Our last day as eighth graders, the teaching staff had arranged a special dinner in the school library, followed by a dance in the gym. The library was bedecked in streamers and the tables were arranged in rows, covered in crisp white tablecloths, and rented china and silverware. I sat across from Jules because that’s where my place card told me to go. I figured our very wise teacher had paired everyone across from their desk buddy in the seating arrangement, to avoid the awkwardness of the recess cliques.

The gym dance opened up with some good fast music that the girls honed in on right away, while the boys either mingled amongst themselves or held up the wall. When the first slow song came on the girls did their customary “hurry up, stop dancing and grab a chair” thing, all of a sudden becoming sweet & docile, waiting for the boys to approach.

Ugh. I hated those times. I almost never got asked to dance and when I did, it was by my male compatriots in the geek squad. I knew the drill well by now, as did everyone else: the most popular boy would approach first, taking his pick of dance partner among all the girls, usually the prettiest one. This would muster the courage of all the other boys who, one after the other, would ask the remaining girls to dance. The second most popular boy, then the third and so on, eventually declining in status and looks until the last two squares went for their turn.

It’s amazing how the mating rituals of adolescents can be compared to those of mountain gorillas.

I took my place on a bench next to the wall and assumed my position of staring at the floor, waiting for the worst to be over. There were more girls in our class than boys, and past experience dictated that either one of the very last boys would ask me, or I wouldn’t get asked at all.

Not 30 seconds into my self-pity, I saw a pair of polished black shoes approach me. And then I heard, “So how about it, kid?”

I looked up. Jules was standing in front of me with his hand held out, and he was smiling. I looked around quickly and saw everyone looking at us, their mouths wide open, surprise written all over their faces. Jules, the most popular boy in our class had made his choice for first dance of the evening, and he’d picked me.

I smiled, stood up, put my hand in his and off we went. Everyone else watched us go, still in the throes of their shock so that we were alone on the floor for the first little bit, dancing in the atypical Catholic school style of a casual sidestep, one arm’s width apart. I don’t remember what song was playing, but I do remember thinking for the first time ever that maybe, just maybe, good stuff happened to too tall, big haired, nerdy girls too.

When the dance was over that night, so was our time as eighth graders. The next day our summer vacation would begin and in two months we’d all be Freshmen. Our ending was bittersweet, Jules’ and mine. We signed each others’ yearbooks, hugged, and left youth behind forever. We went to different high schools in the fall, and I never saw him again.

Looking back on it all, that was my first really first positive relationship with a boy. I started high school a little more grown up, and with a different take on life that would carry and grow stronger through the years. It's amazing what happens to a person when they realize that good things can happen, and that good things do happen.

I’m not sorry that nothing ever happened between Jules and I, not in the emotional sense that is, because I truly love remembering it for what it was: the impossible friendship of Skater Boy and Nerdy Girl.

Jules, if you’re out there somewhere, I’ve never forgotten you, or what you did for me. And, I’ve never forgotten that dance. Thank you.