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When I was a sophomore in high school my locker was very near a boy that I had a crush on in a BAD way. I never knew for sure but I do think that he liked me too, (we were from different crowds, so he would never have admitted to it). We were not unlike other boys and girls in high school who like one another, we teased each other constantly. Sophomores who attended our high school were assigned locker partners, and “PEZ” shared a locker with “Rat Boy”. I am using the nicknames my friends and I used to identify them in notes that were passed back and forth in 1st period world history with Mr. Robinette so that if we were caught and had to read them aloud no one would know who we were talking about. Also like many other high school sophomores, we were typically unkind in the assigning of nicknames, especially to boys who resembled rats.

One day after school a couple of friends and I were sitting by my locker hanging out waiting for a baseball game to start. In our boredom we decided to play a little trick on PEZ. One of my friends who had boyish handwriting concocted this note on a scrap of paper:
“PEZ,
We have been locker partners for 2 years now and friends for much longer. I think it is time we take our relationship to the next level. Let me know what you think. Love, Rat-Boy”

We strategically slipped the note into the locker and on top of PEZ’s books, laughing all the while at how much my friend’s handwriting looked like Rat-Boy’s. We laughed uncontrollably the rest of the night while speculating what would happen the next morning when the note was found.

The next morning I see PEZ at his locker, a strange look on his face and a familiar scrap of paper on the floor by his foot. It was all I could do not to crack up in front of him. When he grabbed the note and walked hastily away, I decided to fill in a couple of friends standing near on what we had done, even though we had said the night before that we wouldn’t.

Fast forward to 2nd period Geography class with Mr. Krebs, a class shared by Rat-Boy, PEZ, myself, and a guy my friends and I called “Auto”. I walked into the room to hear the two boys arguing and the rest of the class staring. PEZ, Rat-Boy, Auto and I sat together at a cluster of 4 desks. Auto was looking back and fourth between the two others laughing and wondering what the hell they were talking about. “What the hell would you write something like that for?”, PEZ was questioning Rat-Boy. Rat-Boy was beginning to freak out as PEZ waved the note around refusing to let Auto see it.

“I swear to God, I didn’t do it!” Rat-Boy was saying.

“It’s your handwriting, I know it was you!”

“It just looks like my writing, I didn’t do it! Did. Not. Do. It. You have to believe me!”

PEZ turns to me and I try to hide the tears about to roll down my cheeks from laughing so hard. He asks me if I have any idea where the note had come from. I told him that I didn’t but maybe if he let me see it I could tell by the handwriting.

“NO!” he yelled as he jerked himself up and shredded the note over the trash.

Class started and we were instructed to break our groups of 4 into groups of 2. I immediately requested to work with Auto so that the two lovebirds could sit alone. (By the way, Auto was another of my infamous crushes.) PEZ and Rat-Boy were still arguing back and fourth with one another and I couldn’t help but put my head down on my desk and laugh hysterically. “You know where it came from and what it says don’t you? Did you do it?” Auto asked me.

Against my better judgment I let him in on our secret and it wasn’t long before he blurted everything out. PEZ was PISSED. The look of relief on Rat-Boy’s face was priceless. That was 2nd period, by 4th period lunch everyone was talking about it.

My friend that wrote the letter was, well to be nice we will say less than popular. She was on Cloud-9 when seniors were coming up to her and calling her by name and telling her what she wrote was awesome.

To be a little selfish here…the whole thing was my idea! I though of what to write and I knew where to put the note in the locker so that he would see it when it was opened in the morning, and I would have written the thing myself had my handwriting been ugly enough to pass for a rats. This is by far one of my favorite memories from highschool!