My senior year in high school, I was heavily addicted to online chat boards, or BBSes (bulletin board systems). There were 6 or 7 of us in my high school who frequented the same board. It started with a board called Liberty which was based out of Anaheim, and then a spin-off board, Liberty Junior. Before the days of global worldwide web popularity, these boards were one of the few ways we could get e-mail accounts. A user of the board could leave a typed message for another user that would appear when the 2nd person next logs on.

One day, I received an email from a user name I didn’t recognize. He said he went to school with me, has admired me for some time, and signed on to the board Liberty, Jr. because he overheard me talking to Mr. Cook about it one day. Of course when you discover you’re being watched and admired, you start dressing better. I happened to have a presentation in 2nd period Economics so I had to dress up for that, and another day my club was doing officers/board members photos, so I was dolled up for that, too. At the end of the week I received another email. He wanted to compliment me for looking pretty that day, in fact he noticed I looked nice all week, and said that he saw that I go see Mr. Cook a lot.

Okay, so that ruled out the possibility that the admirer is a joke from some people I know from the BBS; clearly this was someone who did attend my high school, with whom I regularly cross paths. My 2nd period Economics classroom is right next door to Mr. Cook’s classroom, so sometimes after 2nd period, I’d walk next door and spend 10 minutes hanging out with Mr. Cook (with whom I had Cultural World History Honors in 9th grade and AP US History in 11th grade). I’d only started visiting him with more frequency at the time because he also jumped on Liberty, Jr. one day while I was online and wanted to mess with the heads of other users in the chat room by making random claims about me. I wouldn’t play along and he told me in an online whisper (where no one else but me can read the message) to “loosen up.” I have never forgotten that an adult who teaches advanced high school classes told ME to loosen up. But anyway, that was why I started talking to Mr. Cook during brunch, a 20 minute break between 2nd and 3rd period.

That week, one of my visits to Mr. Cook entailed my bringing the printed email string between me and this admirer, and asking him if that’s him playing some joke on me. He looked at it, chuckled and said earnestly that no, it’s not him. He promised me with a boyscout hand in the air. I went back and forth with him about who he thought it could be, considering this is someone who knows I come in. Mr. Cook teaches an 11th grade history class for 2nd period, and there were some people I knew there from other mixed-level classes.

That evening or soon thereafter, I was online at Liberty, Jr. the same time the admirer logged online! Finally, an opportunity for live chat. He said he thought I was cute, and had overheard a conversation I had with Mr. Cook about this board, so he came online to see if he could get to know me better through the board. He says I do know him in real life. I asked what race he was, and he said “Caucasian.” That seriously narrowed it down to only TWO people, a good-humored 11th grader jock named Blake in my German class, who was in Mr. Cook’s 2nd period history class and may have seen me come in during brunch; and an intellectual-type senior named Sean who was in my 2nd period Economics class, with whom I’d also had a ton of honors classes in the past (a couple of which included Mr. Cook’s classes). I figured it was more likely to be Sean.

I went to Mr. Cook again the next day with my guess. He shrugged and said, “It may be.” I also went to childhood friend Sandy, who was a friend of Sean’s. Sandy informed me that Sean has an Asian fetish, and said, “With Sean, if you’re Asian, anything is possible.”

So starting immediately, I payed a little bit more attention to Sean, just to see what would happen. He was always polite in his responses, but nothing to clue me in that he had any non-ordinary feelings about me. But in visiting Mr. Cook again, this time he said “I don’t think it’s Sean.” He didn’t say why not. I don’t even remember whether I asked. I talked to Sandy again, too. She told me the same thing. “Ya know, I don’t know… I don’t think it’s Sean.” What the…? Did Sean say something to purposely throw people off the scent? If it were me trying to throw people off, I’d say something derogatory about the person I’m interested in, or talk about a new interest who’s not that person. I wondered if he did that, too. I’d also made more of an effort to small-talk Blake in German, and altho he was a nice kid, I didn’t get any major affection vibes.

I was on my own to draw the admirer out now. My only sure contact with him was through Liberty, Jr. So I logged on that night and wrote him an email. Something to the effect of, “I’ve been so depressed lately. It seems like I’m alone and no one cares, and I wonder if people would even notice if I’m missing. There are so many unhappy things going on and no one I can talk to, that I feel like the only way to end all the pain is to kill myself.” There! Ingenius! Surely anyone with a crush on me would immediately offer himself to my assistance, he wouldn’t let the object of his affections just fall off the face of the earth when she’s crying out to him for help, right? (Okay, guys, I was only 17 at the time, I didn’t claim to be a genius.)

I waited eagerly for a day. The email response came back. There were some words meant to console me about how things work themselves out, and the email ended with, “…but if you’re so troubled you feel like you want to kill yourself, you should find an adult you trust and talk to them, or talk to a professional counselor.” What?! Where’s my phone number? Where’s the “here’s who I am, this sounds serious, call me and meet me at the park”?

I printed that email out and showed it to Mr. Cook the next day. He laughed at me. I never heard from the admirer again. To this day I have no idea who it was. I’ve had fantasies that maybe at a future high school reunion, this guy would walk up to me and confess, now that it’s all over and no one cares anymore.

…And that’s how you effectively scare someone off, boys and girls.